About |
Joan Wright Mularz was born into a large family on an island in the middle of New York Harbor. Childhood days spent with five siblings, lots of cousins and dozens of neighborhood kids weren't organized but were busy and fueled by imagination.
Joan always enjoyed writing and drawing and her high school days were enriched with essay contests, Saturday art lessons and working at the public library.
When it came time for college, she commuted daily by ferry to Manhattan. Through her studies and especially art history courses, she developed a yen to see the places she read about. She scrimped and saved while still a student and headed to Europe, truly bitten by the travel bug.
When she met her husband, she found a kindred spirit with a love for exploring new places. They spent their honeymoon on an adventure in Venezuela.
After that, Joan began teaching, had two children, and earned graduate degrees. Her family life has been rich with travel opportunities in the U.S and Canada, Europe, Asia, Central and South America, and Africa - both for work and for pleasure.
Her experiences as a parent and a teacher, both here and abroad, have influenced Joan to write for young people. She has also written curriculums, educational grants, children's books for her own use in the classroom, and always makes notes about the places she travels.
Joan lived in Italy for 2 and a half years, and that became the inspiration for her first E. T. Madigan mystery, Upheavals at Cuma. Six years in Germany led to the writing of the second mystery, White Flutters in Munich, which she is working on now.
When not traveling, Joan now divides much of her time between a small town in Massachusetts and a small town in the western hills of Maine. She enjoys reading, walking, kayaking, hiking, downhill skiing, snowshoeing, gardening, redecorating, art, and, most of all, her family and friends.