Professional Biography

Joanne B. Mulcahy teaches creative nonfiction, ethnographic writing and humanities CORE classes at the NW Writing Institute. She holds degrees in comparative literature (B.A.), cultural anthropology (M.A), and folklore (Ph.D). For over a decade, she taught courses in anthropology and gender studies in Lewis and Clark’s College of Arts and Sciences. She has facilitated workshops in numerous other settings, including the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center, the American Folklore Society, the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry, N. Ireland, Oregon public libraries, and Alaska and Oregon Corrections facilities.

Mulcahy’s writing explores cultural issues through memoir, personal essay, biography, and ethnography. She has conducted field research on Kodiak Island, Alaska, in Northern Ireland, Michoacan, Mexico, and throughout Oregon. She moved to Oregon to serve as Director of the Oregon Folk Arts Program from 1988-91. In that position, she documented cultural traditions, wrote articles and created exhibits to bring vernacular traditions to public attention. Her commitment to collaborative models of writing and public presentation includes local people and communities in the representation of their own cultures.

Mulcahy is the author of two books about traditional healers, Birth and Rebirth on an Alaskan Island and Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Stories that Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write about the West, Resurrecting Grace: Remembering Catholic Childhoods, Women Writing Women: A Frontiers Reader, and These United States. Her awards include fellowships from The Oregon Institute of Literary Arts, the New Letters nonfiction prize, and grants from The British Council, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and the Oregon Council for the Humanities. She has held writing residencies at Caldera, the Espy Foundation, Hedgebrook, the Island Institute, The Mesa Refuge, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and UCross.

Selected Publications

Books:

Birth and Rebirth on an Alaskan Island: The Life of an Alutiiq Healer. University of Georgia Press, 2001.

Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz. Trinity University Press, 2010.

Essays and Articles:

“Between the Lines,” Oregon English Journal. Summer, 2012.

“Unimaginable Riches,” Oregon Humanities, August 2011.

“Magical Thinking” in Anthropology and Humanism, June 2010.

“The Weight of Faith: Generative Metaphors in the Stories of Eva Castellanoz,” in Living With Stories. Ed. William Schneider. Logan: University of Utah Press, 2008.

“Affectionados” in The Folklore Muse. Ed. Frank de Caro. Logan: University of Utah Press, 2008.

“Waitress,” Oregon Humanities, Fall 2007

“Know Who Your Are: Regional Identity in the Teachings of Eva Castellanoz,” Oregon Historical Quarterly, Fall 2007, Vol. 108, No. 3.

“Weave and Mend” in Women Writing Women: A Frontiers Reader Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006; originally published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, 2000.

“The Root and the Flower” in the Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 118, No 467, 2005.

“Oregon: A Contrary Unity” in These United States, ed. John Leonard. NY: Nation Books, 2002.

“Dreams of Martyrdom” in Resurrecting Grace:Remembering Catholic Childhoods. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

“Through Dreams and Shadows” in The Stories That Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write About the West. (eds.) Teresa Jordan and James R. Hepworth. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995.

Academic Credentials

Ph.D. 1988, B.A. 1977 University of Pennsylvania
M.A. 1983 University of Wisconsin, Madison

*photo by Judy Blankenship