Joanna Thomas

Joanna Thomas is both visual artist and poet. Her collages have been exhibited in museums, galleries and universities across the nation, including Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art in Florida, NOPE Gallery in Los Angeles, Kent State University in Ohio, and PUNCH Gallery in Seattle. She is a signature member of the National Association of Women Artists and the National Collage Society. Her poems, which often combine word and image, have appeared in Picture Sentence, Otoliths, Found Poetry Review, and shufPoetry, and in several anthologies, including WA129. In September 2018, she will present OB•LIT•ER•ATE, an exhibition of erasure poetry, at BOXX Gallery in Tieton, WA, and, in conjunction, during the annual LiTFUSE poets’ conference there, she will conduct a workshop investigating “erasure” as meditation and cure for writer’s block. She is currently erasing the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Joanna received 2017 GAP Award funding to cover the cost of tuition, room, board, and travel expenses, enabling me to attend the prestigious week-long Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, in Port Townsend, WA, an experience that will allow me to hone my craft, concentrate my creative energy, and establish important personal contacts. Further, this experience will aid me in evaluating my work, expose me to master workshop leaders’ methods, and bolster my confidence for developing a pedagogy of my own, with the goal of personally conducting workshops that explore the creative process of combining word and image.

Artist Trust thanks the Amazon Literary Partnership for underwriting this award through Artist Trust’s Corporate Partnership program. For information about supporting Washington State artists, visit here.