About Joan Schweighardt
Author, Publisher, Publicist 

Joan Schweighardt, a native of New Jersey, grew up in a working class family where education wasn’t highly valued. Her father, a factory worker who had to drop out of school in the 6^th grade, could not imagine the usefulness of a college education for a woman. And so Joan, who wrote poems and stories from a very early age, never really thought about finishing her education after she graduated from high school.

After a succession of jobs, she took a position with an advertising agency in New York City that allowed her to have some days off. Wanting to see if she could cut it, she decided to take some college courses—and discovered that within her was a great love of knowledge and writing. While taking these courses, she won a creative writing award.

Work and wanderlust took her down to Florida where she had her first child. Then she moved to Upstate New York, to a tiny little cottage in the woods. There she finished her BA degree Summa Cum Laude from the State University of New York (SUNY), New Paltz, receiving the English department’s "Outstanding Achievement" award. Next came graduate school, where she became a teaching assistant and started submitting her short stories to "little" literary magazines. Joan started working on Gudrun’s Tapestry at this time because she fell in love with the Nordic Poetic Eddas she was studying as part of her graduate work.

When she had her second child, she left graduate school and went to work part-time, freeing up valuable time for writing. In five years she completed three novels (Virtual Silence, Island and Homebodies all published by Permanent Press). She remembers this period of her life as particularly fulfilling.

But after her youngest son began school, she went back to work full-time, first as an office manager and then in a public relations firm. It was in this time period that she finished Gudrun’s Tapestry. Then she and her ex-husband sold their house and Joan received an unexpected windfall. A friend, Julie Mars, showed her a manuscript for a novel called The Secret Keepers that Joan thought was wonderful; so Joan decided to start up the publishing company, GreyCore Press <http://www.greycore.com>, at the age of fifty. The morning after she told Ms. Mars of her decision, Joan woke up petrified at her decision. But she was prevented from going back on her word by her compassion for another writer. GreyCore Press has since published seven other titles, many of which have received critical praise.

A few years ago, a friend was telling Joan she’d seen and liked the movie Attila the Hun. The actor who played the horrific Hun (Gerard Butler) was good-looking and Attila was portrayed in the movie as more of an adventurer than a warlord. Stunned that the ancient equivalent of Adolph Hitler would be treated lightly, Joan started sending Gudrun’s Tapestry (the main character Gudrun sets out to kill Attila) out to publishers.

Joan continues to run her publishing company, do freelance publicity for select clients and write from her home in Pine Bush, New York. She lives with her husband, son and patient dog.