Joan Leotta is an American-Italian from Calabash, NC. She’s been a journalist, novelist, poet, and playwright for most of her life. As a child, Leotta was always drawn to storytelling and writing. In her elementary school fifth grade, a teacher of hers started a newspaper for young Leotta as she knew how greatly she enjoyed and had such a passion for writing stories, which eventually allowed other students in Pittsburgh to submit their own stories as well. While Leotta still lived in Pittsburgh, she entered tons of writing contests that allowed her to submit her short stories and gain attention.

As her life went on, she went to college for a major in journalism, though she ended up changing to political Science, even if it wasn’t her passion at the time. She went to grad school for Economics, which she could do for two years together, one year in Washington DC, and the second year in Italy. This brought out the love for Leotta’s feelings for traveling in her life.

Once Mrs. Leotta married her husband, she had two children: a daughter and a son. When Mrs.Leotta went to work, she always took her children with her, finding love and enjoyment with them before they had to go to school. At one point, when her son’s school had asked for Mrs. Leotta’s aid and help at one of the school performances, which had brought out the mere passion she had set inside herself from a child, being something she claimed, “I could do that.”

For her writing and performance, Mrs.Leotta always finds ways to stay true to herself in her poems and plays, being much of a family-friendly performer for all ages to come and watch her storytelling, and has always enjoyed stimulating creativity for her audience. Mrs. Leotta found great enjoyment for her audience to find a new passion or interest in her history storytelling, and she was always open to questions in the final act. Mrs. Leotta’s end goal for her performances is to have a good time for her audience, the exposure from historical tellings, and the beauty of respect built upon these stories she tells.

Mrs. Leotto’s newest book, Feathers on Stone, is a chapbook built on the poems she has written, filled with her own experiences within and such wonderful themes that hold great significance for Mrs. Leotta: Family, Nature, and Moments of Wondering. Mrs. Leotta wrote her poems in a way that was understood easily by people who were personally for her and reflections of her own moments in life.

Advice from Mrs. Leotta for young writers wanting to post their stories out for the world to view and see: Keep writing, and keep sending your work out to the people. It will get rejected at times, but it should not stop you from tinkering with it and sending it out again. It will find a home one day.