The rooftops of Pátzcuaro, Mexico

Joanne B. Mulcahy grew up near Philadelphia, spent summers in New England with extended family, and moved West in her twenties. She found a home amid the mountains of Oregon and Michoacán, Mexico, both echoes of Vermont. In 2013, while teaching at La Universidad Latina de América in Morelia, she discovered the murals of an extraordinary but largely forgotten artist. After a ten-year odyssey, Marion Greenwood: Portrait and Self-Portrait—A Biography, will be published by University of Alabama Press in March 2025.

Mulcahy’s study of anthropology (MA) and folklore (PhD) inspired her travels to the Arctic, Northern Ireland, Australia, and Latin American and inspired three other books. Writing Abroad: A Guide for Travelers (with Peter Chilson) offers a toolkit for discovering diverse cultures. The book received the Peace Corps Worldwide Best Travel Book award in 2017 and was included in Poets and Writers Magazine’s 2018 List of Best Books for Writers. Her chronicles of two traditional healers, Birth and Rebirth on an Alaskan Island and Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz, explore the cultural frameworks that surround health and illness. About Remedios, Julia Alvarez wrote,  “Mulcahy has done for the curandera what Carlos Castaneda did for shamanism. This book is itself a remedio, inspiring and healing.”

Mulcahy’s essays and interviews appear in numerous journals, including Hyperallergic, The Writers’ Chronicle, and The Women’s Review of Books. Her work is anthologized in The Stories that Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write about the West, Resurrecting Grace: Remembering Catholic Childhoods, Women Writing Women: A Frontiers Reader, and These United States. “Hunger” won the New Letters Nonfiction Award, and “How to Write a Biography” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Numerous organizations and fellowships have supported her work, among them The Alaska Humanities Forum, The Barbara Deming Fund for Women Writers, The British Council, Oregon’s Literary Arts, and Fulbright-García Robles. She’s been a resident at Caldera, Hedgebrook, The Mesa Refuge, The Millay Colony, Playa, UCross, and other artists’ retreats.

For over thirty years, Mulcahy taught creative nonfiction at the NW Writing Institute of Lewis and Clark College, and anthropology and gender studies to undergraduates. In 2003, she founded the Writing Culture Summer Institute, which brought writers and cultural workers together. Additionally, she offered workshops for The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and co-directed the NW Writing Institute’s Certificate in Documentary Studies. She has also taught in libraries, prisons, and varied community settings in the US and abroad. In 2025, she will be on the faculty of the San Miguel Writers Conference.

She lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon and Pátzcuaro, Mexico.