About

Poet, essayist, and scholar Joanna Penn Cooper is the founder of Muse Writing & Creative Support. Joanna founded Muse to bring together her years of teaching and editing experience and to share her knowledge of the writing world in a warm, supportive environment. Joanna has been teaching writing and literature since the mid-1990s and has held full-time visiting positions at Marquette and Fordham Universities. Since 2015, Joanna has taught community creative writing workshops in memoir and personal essay, and she currently teaches online workshops in flash memoir and lyric essay for the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, in addition to her classes through Muse. She holds a PhD in English from Temple University and an MFA from New England College, and she lives in Durham, North Carolina

Joanna is the author of The Itinerant Girl's Guide to Self-Hypnosis (Brooklyn Arts Press), What Is a Domicile (Noctuary Press), and Crown (Ravenna Press), as well as several chapbooks. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day feature, as well as South Dakota Review, Zócalo Public Square, Open Letters Monthly, Poetry International, and other journals. Her recent chapbooks are When We Were Fearsome and Wild Apples (both from Ethel Zine and Micro-Press) .

Teaching and Mentoring

Muse Writing & Creative Support, offers an independent, flexible “school” that meets writers where they are. Joanna’s teaching style is nonjudgmental and adaptive, helping you build on your strengths and discover a deeply satisfying connection to your writing voice and your narratives. Muse provides writers with access to mentorship, services, and community no matter where they are geographically or in life. Many of Muse’s clients are returning to writing—or adding writing to other forms of creative production—after or around other life responsibilities. As editor, coach, and teacher, Joanna has a deep understanding of both the needs of those with a creative spirit and the reality of life demands. The aim at Muse is to welcome you back to your writing life and to the community of writers.

Editing

Joanna is an experienced editor who brings a compassionate, sensitive, and rigorous eye to writing. Past clients have included writers of dissertations in the fields of history, education, and English; a company of research scientists studying expertise; and writers of memoir, personal essays, and poetry.

Joanna specializes in line editing and developmental editing. Essays she has worked on with clients have appeared in Ron Slate’s On the Seawall, Literary Hub, Gulf Coast, Hobart, and other venues. She has also worked with poets and memoirists on full-length book manuscripts.