Joyce Thompson was born in Seattle in 1948. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1970; her novel Hothouse chronicles the campus upheavals of the late 1960s. She lived in New York, Boston, Portland, Oakland and an island in Puget Sound. Joyce Thompson is the mother of two and the stepmother of three children. She has worked for publishers and a media production group, taught writing at a number of community colleges and universities throughout the West, and is a founding faculty member of the Oregon Writers’ Workshop. Her books include Bones, Hothouse, The Blue Chair and Merry-Go-Round and the short story collections 35¢ Thrills and East is West of Here. (Source: author info in "Conscience Place", "Bones" and "Sailing My Shoe to Timbuktu")