I’m a writer, a contributing editor of The Yale Review and the author of A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again, which was a finalist for the 2023 National Award for Arts Writing. I’ve written for The London Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, Bookforum, Granta, The Paris Review Daily, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, and The Sunday Times. I live in New York City.

After working at The London Review of Books for fifteen years, I was a senior editor at Harper’s Magazine and then deputy editor of The Yale Review, which received the National Magazine Award for Fiction during my tenure. I am now contributing editor at The Yale Review.

In 2017, I co-founded Silver Press with Alice Spawls and Sarah Shin. My first book, All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work, came out in 2015 with Serpent’s Tail in the UK.

I was a recipient of a grant from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation in 2020, and part of the inaugural cohort at the Willa Cather Writers’ Residency in Red Cloud, Nebraska in 2023. I was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2024. I have been a fellow of Grace Hopper College, Yale University, since 2025 and was elected to the National Book Critics Circle board in 2026. I became a fellow of the UK’s Royal Society of Literature in summer 2026.

In 2026-27, I am a lecturer of English at Yale University, where I am teaching public criticism and creative writing.

You can email me at joanna[dot]biggs[at]gmail[dot]com, follow me on Twitter [at]JoannaBiggs or on Instagram [at]joanouvelle