Joanne Meschery is an American fiction writer. She is the author of three novels: In a High Place (1981), A Gentleman's Guide to the Frontier (1990), which was nominated for a Pen/Faulkner Award, and Home and Away (Simon & Schuster, 1994), recently reprinted by the University of California Press

University of California Press

University of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...

 as part of their California Writers Series. Joanne Meschery was married to former NBA player Tom Meschery

Tom Meschery

Thomas Nicholas "Tom" Meschery is a Russian American former professional basketball player. He was a power forward with a 10 year National Basketball Association career from 1961 to 1971. He played for the Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors and the Seattle SuperSonics...

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Meschery, though born in Texas, spent her early childhood years in Boston, Massachusetts, and later moved with her family to Modesto, California

Modesto, California

Modesto is a city in, and is the county seat of, Stanislaus County, California. With a population of approximately 201,165 at the 2010 census, Modesto ranks as the 18th largest city in the state of California....

. She attended high school in Fallon, Nevada

Fallon, Nevada

-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 7,536 people, 3,004 households, and 1,877 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,474.1 people per square mile . There were 3,336 housing units at an average density of 1,095.2 per square mile...

. Her work has been awarded two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts along with numerous other prizes. She studied at the University of Iowa

University of Iowa

The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...

 Workshop and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. She taught creative writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

 at the University of Arkansas

University of Arkansas

The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...

 and now teaches English and creative writing at San Diego State University

San Diego State University

San Diego State University , founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, is the largest and oldest higher education facility in the greater San Diego area , and is part of the California State University system...

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Joanne Meschery was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 1999.

Nevada Writers Hall of Fame