Joan Campion

Joan Campion (1940- ) was born in Pennsylvania's "Dutch" country, and grew up in a valley of farms which has since been nearly obliterated by shopping centers and housing developments. Her family was not deeply involved with its Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, but she has become more interested in it with the passing years. Today she sometimes refers to herself as "Anglo-Pennsylvania Dutch."

Always interested in history, she was stunned as a very young child by her first encounter with news of the Nazi Holocaust. Her first published book was "In The Lion's Mouth: Gisi Fleischmann and the Jewish Fight For Survival". This was followed by "Smokestacks and Black Diamonds", a widely admired history of her native Carbon County. Most recently she has put out "Jerusalem Journal: Adventures In a Desert Landscape", which she describes as a "historical travel memoir that a lot of people have enjoyed".

Campion is working on a memoir on her youth in the now-"developed" (i.e., destroyed) Mahoning Valley.

She loves to read history and fantasy--anything, she says "that will take me to exotic places no road leads to."

Places, in short, like Middlearth and Ancient Rome.