BIOGRAPHY

JoSelle Vanderhooft was born on August 5, 1980 in Framingham, Massachusetts when Leo ruled but Gemini was on the rise. By no means a young woman yet, she nonetheless migrated West to Salt Lake City just like her pioneering Mormon ancestors, and she currently calls this city of salt and sand her home. She wrote her first produced play at 16 and graduated from the University of Utah with honors bachelor degrees in English and Theatre Studies. While studying here she received the Steffenson-Cannon fellowship which she held from 1999-2001. She also served as literary intern for several theatres including New Dramatists, The Women's Project and Productions and the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

A dramaturg and something of a lapsed playwright, Vanderhooft now works as a freelance journalist, poet and fiction writer. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in print and online in such venues as Aofie's Kiss, Byzarium, Cabinet des Fées, Jabberwocky, Not One of Us, MYTHIC, Mythic Delirium, Reflections Edge, Star*Line and several others.

Her first collection 10,000 Several Doors was released as an e-book from Cat's Eye Publishing on Christmas, 2005. It will be available in print form in 2007. A poetry chap book, Desert Songs, about Vanderhooft's experiences living in Utah, will be released from Cross Cultural Communications in autumn, 2006.

Her first novel The Tale of the Miller's Daughter was released from Papaveria Press in June, 2006 and her second, Owl Skin, is forthcoming in December of the same year. She edited the Torquere Press anthology of lesbian fairytales Sleeping Beauty, Indeed and is currently editing Tiresias Revisited: Magical Tales for Transfolk for Lethe Press (to be released April, 2007). For more on Vanderhooft's editing projects, please visit the Submissions page.

As a critic, Vanderhooft reviews novels, poetry and short story collections for The Pedestal Magazine, Star*Line and other such publications. She has also regularly writes critically about children's literature (the Harry Potter novels particularly), film, television and Utah culture.

The next two years will see the publication of several of Vanderhooft's works including The Claudius Trilogy and a series of four short story and poetry collections from Papaveria Press.

JoSelle may be reached at upstart.crow@gmail.com.