The Japanese hold a Mogi ceremony for young women coming of age. Latina teenagers get quinceaneras. And Janice Wills of Melva, NC ... has to compete in the Miss Livermush pageant. Janice loves anthropology--the study of human cultures--and her observations help her identify useful rules in the chaotic world of high school. For instance: Dancing is an effective mating ritual--but only if you're good at it; Hot Theatre Guys will never speak to Unremarkable Smart Girls like Janice and her best friend, Margo; and a Beautiful Rich Girl will always win Melva's annual Miss Livermush pageant. But when a Hot Theatre Guy named Jimmy Denton takes an interest in Janice, all her scientific certainties explode. For the first time, she has to be part of the culture that she's always observed; and all the charts in the world can't prove how tough--and how sweet--real participation and a real romance can be. Funny, biting, and full of wisdom, this marks the debut of a writer to watch.

The Rites & Wrongs of Janice Wills

Teen & Young Adult

Pearson, Joanna

Literature & Fiction

Arthur A. Levine Books

Product Description 
Poised on the precipice of mystery and longing, each character in Now You Know It All also hovers on the brink of discovery—and decision. Set in small-town North Carolina, or featuring eager Southerners venturing afar, these stories capture the crucial moment of irrevocable change. A young waitress accepts an offer from a beguiling stranger; a troubled boy attempts to unleash the villain from an internet hoax on his party guests; a smitten student finds more than she bargained for in her favorite teacher’s attic; two adult sisters reconvene to uncover a family secret hidden in plain sight. With a sharp eye for rendering inner life, Joanna Pearson has a knack for creating both compassion and a looming sense of threat. Her stories peel back the layers of the narratives we tell ourselves in an attempt to understand the world, revealing that the ghosts haunting us are often the very shadows that we cast. 
 Review 
“Subtle and moving . . . Pearson’s stories glide through their alarming moments with a precision hard to look away from. This will transfix and unsettle.” 
—Publishers Weekly\n“Joanna Pearson’s 
Now You Know It All offers a splendid array of stories that reminded me page after page of old-fashioned stories when writers built their pieces brick by brick and built them to last. Pearson is not after the quick two-page, soulless anecdote glancing. [With a] Southern flavor, 
Now You Know It All is about the souls and hearts of the characters and how so very much of living got them to a point where nothing can be the same again.” 
—Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World\n“I love this book. Joanna Pearson’s skills as a storyteller seem limitless. She writes about men, women, and children with confidence and believability, with such humor, flair, and even horror, I feel like she’s the one who knows it all.” 
—Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and The Kings and Queens of Roam\n“Joanna Pearson’s blazingly insightful stories veer in and out of the uncanny to imagine women at turning points—a small-town college student on her first internship, a mother recovering from postpartum psychosis, a waitress fleeing Epstein-like abuse—to speak to the dangers and unease of our time. More powerfully, they uncover the perils always lurking in the ‘trick brain,’ as one character puts it, the part of the self drawn to life’s darkest places. A collection you won’t soon forget.” 
—Belle Boggs, author of The Gulf, Mattaponi Queen, and The Art of Waiting 
 About the Author 
Joanna Pearson is a lapsed poet who once wrote a young adult novel on a whim but nowadays mostly writes short fiction. Her first collection of stories, 
Every Human Love, was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Foreword Indies Awards, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been included in 
The Best American Mystery and Suspense, 
The Best Small Fictions, and 
Best of the Net, as well as other journals. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and an MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. A native of western North Carolina, she now lives with her husband and two daughters near Chapel Hill, where she works as a psychiatrist.

Now You Know It All (Drue Heinz Literature Prize)

United States

University of Pittsburgh Press

Short Stories & Anthologies

Oldest Mortal Myth

The precise gaze and chiseled language of the poems in Oldest Mortal Myth authoritatively convey a broad and deep knowledge. Whether a reimagining a Greek myth in order to infuse it with a contemporary pain, extending empathy and humorous Mitmenschkeit to both denizens and voyeurs of the world's freakshows, or describing with wit and experience the spiritual affects of medical conditions, the book is infused with restrained but piercing emotion, a subtle metrical ear, and enough daring and wit to write in rhymed couplets to take the obvious, easy way. For instance, with the last line of "De Wallen, Amsterdam": "The moon above the spires, a sexless disk,/eyes us coolly as an odalisque." I so admire the refusal to make that last line scan as a perfect iambic pentameter line. It would be so easy; all you'd have to do is add the grammatical, but colloquial, "as." Which would have ruined the line, and the poem. Oh, and the rhymes in the canzone! There's much to admire here, much to enjoy. --Marilyn Nelson

Poetry

Story Line Press

The precise gaze and chiseled language of the poems in Oldest Mortal Myth authoritatively convey a broad and deep knowledge. Whether a reimagining a Greek myth in order to infuse it with a contemporary pain, extending empathy and humorous Mitmenschkeit to both denizens and voyeurs of the world's freakshows, or describing with wit and experience the spiritual affects of medical conditions, the book is infused with restrained but piercing emotion, a subtle metrical ear, and enough daring and wit to write in rhymed couplets to take the obvious, easy way. For instance, with the last line of “De Wallen, Amsterdam”: “The moon above the spires, a sexless disk,/eyes us coolly as an odalisque.” I so admire the refusal to make that last line scan as a perfect iambic pentameter line. It would be so easy; all you’d have to do is add the grammatical, but colloquial, “as.” Which would have ruined the line, and the poem. Oh, and the rhymes in the canzone! There’s much to admire here, much to enjoy. 
—Marilyn Nelson

Bright and Tender Dark

Bloomsbury Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pearson, Joanna. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pearson, Joanna