Joanne Greenberg is an American author born September 24, 1932, in Brooklyn, New York. She was an adjunct instructor of anthropology at the Colorado School of Mines, an elementary school teacher, and a volunteer with the Lookout Mountain Fire Department and the Highland Rescue Team.
Ms. Greenberg is best known for the classic novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which was published in 1964. The book became a movie in 1977 and a play in 2004. Penguin Books recently re-released it in their Classics Collection.
Her first book, The King’s Persons, was released in 1963 and received the Harry and Ethel Daroff Memorial Fiction Award and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. She appeared in the 2004 Daniel Mackler documentary Take These Broken Wings, which is about recovering from schizophrenia without the use of psychiatric medication.
She is also known for In This Sign, written in 1970 and recognized as a definitive novel about the Deaf in America. Hallmark Hall of Fame made that book into a made-for-TV movie, Love Is Never Silent, in 1985.
Hadassah’s Women in the Arts Award 2008
William and Janice Eppstein Fiction Award 1964
Fromm Reichmann Award 1967
Kenner Award 1971
Christopher Award 1971
DHL Gallaudet College 1979
DL Western Maryland College 1977
Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute Award 1983
DHL University of Colorado 1987
Denver Public Library Bookplate Award 1990
Colorado Author of the Year 1991
CSM Distinguished Lecturer 1996
CSM Medal 1999
“A miracle of empathy, a tour de force of imaginative conjecture … Writers were invented to produce books like this.” – Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times on In This Sign
“Excellent … not only artistically ‘beautiful’ but morally and spiritually beautiful as well.”
– Joyce Carol Oates, Chicago Tribune on Rites of Passage
“Greenberg writes as brilliantly and familiarly of her adopted Colorado as Willa Cather did of her childhood in Nebraska.”
– Washington Star on Founder’s Praise
“Thought-provoking and heartwarming … compellingly believable characterizations as well as a vibrant evocation of an ordinary life touched by pain and joy, love and sharing, commitment and hope.”
– Booklist on A Season of Delight
“Greenberg hits her full storytelling stride. Stimulating and involving.”
– Kirkus Reviews on Where The Road Goes
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