Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs folk and personal tales of food, family, strong women on stages across the country and in Europe and offers a one woman show bringing Louisa May Alcott to modern audiences. Internationally published as essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a two-time Pushcart nominee (fiction and poetry), Best of the Net nominee, Western Peace Prize, and a 2022 runner-up in Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, CNF, and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Impspired, Spillwords, One Art, Lothlorien, Ekphrastic Review, Ovunquesiamo, Red Eft, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, Synkroniciti, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Pure Slush, several Murderous Ink Anthologies, and others. Her poetry chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon (Finishing Line), and Feathers on Stone (Main Street Rag).