Joan HandJoan Carole Hand was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1943. She migrated east on Long Island to Rocky Point in 1969. Trained as a fiction writer, she also found her poetic voice with her first book, Entrances to Nowhere (Cross-Cultural Communications, 1977) followed by The Facts of Life (Cross-Cultural Communications, 1987), and East of July (Cross-Cultural Communications, 2004). Her poetry has been published in literary quarterlies and magazines throughout the United States and internationally, including in Sicily, Wales and South Korea. In Mommy, she has brought together all of her sense memories, all the nuances of light, shadow, and color, and the lives of the people, who she encountered during her more than fifty years of swimming to the rhythm of the waves. She holds an A.B. from Bard College, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshops. She is a mother of three, a grandmother of three and a cat mother of one. Read More Read Less