Jacqueline St. Joan has worked as a lawyer, county judge, child advocate, domestic violence activist, co-editor of an anthology on Women, Law, and Literature in the U.S., and founder of a feminist press. Such life experiences inform her poetry and her many award-winning essays and stories. In the 1990s, she met a Pakistani teacher who helped rescue women from honor killings. The meeting led to extensive travel in Pakistan, enduring friendships, research and personal investigation, lobbying, political activism and fundraising. Her first novel, MY SISTERS MADE OF LIGHT, prequel to THE SHAWL OF MIDNIGHT, developed out of those experiences. A lifelong feminist and longtime lawyer, she has done more than a hundred public and private readings and lectures all over the U.S., related to violence against women in Pakistan--literature, law and honor crimes in particular. Those events led to sales and donations of $25,000 sent to Pakistan for the construction of a shelter for women and children escaping abuse, which opened in Punjab in 2016. She has taught at the University of Colorado and Metropolitan University in Denver.
