Joanna Campbell

Joanna Campbell

Joanna Campbell is the author of Instructions for the Working Day (2022).

Joanna Campbell lives in Gloucestershire. She studied German at university and as a student spent a year living in West Germany. Joanna has worked as a teacher of both German and English, and now writes full-time. She is very interested in the Cold War − particularly the communist state of East Germany − partly as a result of studying the era for her university course and also from living with West Germans devastated by the division of their country and separated from their loved ones. She loves to write about the themes of separation and isolation as a result of this interest.

She is learning to paint and most of her efforts involve abstract cityscapes reminiscent of battle-scarred Berlin. Her debut novel Tying Down the Lion was published in 2015, and her short story collection When Planets Slip Their Tracks (2016) was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Her novella Sybilla won the 2021 National Flash Fiction Day Novella-in-Flash Award. Her short fiction has been published in many anthologies and literary magazines, and has won several awards including the London Short Story Prize.

Read our interview with Joanna about Instructions for the Working Day (along with an exclusive extract) here.