Joan Jacobson

WINNER of the 2024 WILLA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction and 2022 Colorado Authors League Award for Nonfiction History! What makes my books winners? Because I let my readers in on a secret - the past was sexier and more interesting than your grandma and history teachers let on. At first blush, my three books seem completely different, but that theme ties them all together. WILLA award-winner Dr. Martha Cannon of Utah (unofficially titled Prudery, Polygamy, & Politics), tells the true story of the 19th-century polygamous Mormon wife who ran against her husband for Utah Senate and won. CAL winner Colorado Phantasmagorias spotlights the legacies of 15 influential Coloradans, including a Victorian-era lesbian couple who ran away to get married, a surgeon who performed 6,000 gender confirmation surgeries in the late 20th century, plus a bunch of historical rabble-rousers. Small Secrets, which is award-worthy nevermind that it wasn't ever entered in a contest, is a literary novel that uncovers the shame of so-called "unwed mothers" from your mother's and grandmothers' generations. "There's nothing new under the sun" is a truism that makes these stories fascinating reading, whether the genre is fiction, non-fiction, or a mix of both.