Joanne Merriam is the owner and publisher of Upper Rubber Boot Books. She is the co-editor (with H. L. Nelson) of the feminist anthology of dark fiction, Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good , and editor of its sequel, Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good as well as the immigrant science fiction anthology, How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens and the adventure anthology The Museum of All Things Awesome And That Go Boom . She is also the author of the poetry collection The Glaze from Breaking , originally published by Stride Books and re-released by URB.

She was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1973. A graduate in English and Mathematics from Dalhousie University, she has worked as an oil and gas lease and title administrator, courier dispatcher, telemarketer, charity fundraiser, sheet music librarian, Medicaid claim sorter, check composition specialist, disability and workers' compensation administrator and web designer. She is currently employed by a large hospital system to run a surgical fellowship, other educational programming, and the lives of four attendings.

In 2001, she quit her job as the Executive Assistant of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia to travel Canada by train, and then parts of the Northeastern and Southern United States. In 2004, she immigrated to the USA. She has lived in Kentucky and New Hampshire, and now resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

Joanne Merriam's poetry and fiction has appeared in dozens of magazines and journals, including The Antigonish Review, Asimov's Science Fiction, The Fiddlehead, The Furnace Review, Grain, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, The Mainichi Daily News, Per Contra, Riddle Fence, Room of One's Own, Strange Horizons and Vallum Contemporary Poetry, as well as in the anthologies Ice: new writing on hockey, To Find Us: Words and Images of Halifax and The Allotment: New Lyric Poets.