About

Hannah Joyner is a freelance critic and an independent historian who lives in the Washington DC area. She reviews both fiction and nonfiction with a special interest in:

*biographies of literary figures, composers and musicians, and visual artists
*grief, illness, and disability memoirs
*women’s history and literature, southern history and literature, and the history of race in America.

Joyner has book criticism published or forthcoming in the Women’s Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Harvard Review, On the Seawall, the Washington Independent Review of Books, the Chicago Review of Books, Deep South Magazine, and other venues. She is an editor for Open Letters Review.

In addition to her work as a book reviewer and critic, Joyner is an independent scholar.  Joyner received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard and her PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania.  Her work includes Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson (with Susan Burch) and From Pity to Pride: Growing Up Deaf in the Old South.

You can find more of her bookish conversation on her YouTube channel Hannah’s Books.