1. Joan Alison Smith was born on 27 August 1953 and is an English journalist and novelist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN and was the Executive Director of Hacked Off.
12 Facts About Joan Smith
1. 2.
Joan Smith attended the Girls' Grammar School in Stevenage and Basingstoke High School for Girls before reading Latin at the University of Reading in the early 1970s.
3.
Joan Smith has had a regular column in The Guardian's Weekend supplement, freelancing for the newspaper and has contributed to The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, and the New Statesman.
4.
Joan Smith is scornful of popular culture and once gave away her television set to her ex-husband, although she acquired a new set almost a decade later.
5.
Joan Smith testified that she considered celebrities thought they could control press content if they put themselves into the public domain when, in reality the opposite was more likely.
6.
Outside the UK, Joan Smith is probably best known for the Loretta Lawson series of crime novels which were published between 1987 and 1995.
7.
Joan Smith is a supporter of the pressure group Republic and a Patron of Humanists UK.
8.
Joan Smith is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.
9.
Joan Smith was appointed the Executive Director of Hacked Off in late May 2014 in succession to Brian Cathcart.
10.
Joan Smith assumed the position in June, but stood down in late June 2015 to return to her writing career full-time.
11.
Joan Smith is due to publish an account of femicide in ancient Rome by the end of 2024.
12.
Joan Smith was married to journalist Francis Wheen between 1985 and 1993.