Joanna Pearson is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and psychiatrist. She published a book of short stories, Every Human Love, in 2019 and a mystery-thriller novel, Bright and Tender Dark, in 2024. Pearson is a recipient of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

Pearson grew up in Cleveland County, North Carolina.^[1] She was presented to society at the North Carolina Debutante Ball in Raleigh in 1999.^[1]

Pearson graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002.^[2] She obtained a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.^[3][4]

Her short stories have appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, storySouth, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, and Joyland.^[3][1][5] In 2012, she won the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. Her short story Changeling was honored as a distinguished story in The Best American Short Stories in 2015.^[3] In May 2019, she published a collection of short stories as a book, titled Every Human Love.^[3] In 2021, she was awarded the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.^[6][7] She was nominated for the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and a Virginia Literary Award.^[8] She was the only North Carolinian in South Arts' inaugural class of State Fellows for Literary Arts.^[9]

Her debut novel, Bright and Tender Dark, was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2024.^[8] The novel is a mystery-thriller work.^[10][11]

Pearson also works as a psychiatrist.^[12]

Pearson lives in Carrboro, North Carolina with her husband and two children.^[4]