Jo Ann Beard

Ben Belitt Distinguished Writer

Jo Ann Beard is the author of The Boys of My Youth, Festival Days, and In Zanesville. She is an emeritus professor at Sarah Lawrence College, where she taught in both the undergraduate and graduate programs.  

joannbeard@bennington.edu

Biography

Beard is the author of the essay collections The Boys of My Youth, Festival Days, The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard, as well as the novel In Zanesville. She received a Whiting Foundation Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2022, she was the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Beard is an emeritus professor of nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and lives in Rhinebeck, New York. 

Beard joins Bennington as the Ben Belitt Distinguished Writer for Spring 2026.

Courses