I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Joanne Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1932. Her early childhood was marred by the terror a child might well feel when talk of world war looms around her; but World War II turned out to cause some of the lesser fears that she faced. In her attempt to find peace in her personal world, young Joanne created an interior world of her own, one she developed so craftily it became both her sanctuary and her prison. By the age of thirty-two, Greenberg had fought her way out of that self-imposed, interior world and had the courage to write and have published an account of her battle. Her 1964 fictionalized autobiography about schizophrenia became a national bestseller, a book entitled I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which she published under the pseudonym Hannah Green.

By the time Greenberg published Rose Garden, she had graduated from American University, with majors in anthropology and English. She had also married Albert Greenberg, who encouraged her to write this book.

Greenberg went on to write a dozen novels, several collections of short stories, and many essays on a variety of topics. She was particularly interested in the subject of people who must cope with physical and mental deficits. For instance, while her husband was working with hearing-impaired clients, she became interested in the world of deaf people and the challenges they face. She learned sign language in order to communicate with deaf people. She also helped to set up a mental health clinic for the hearing-impaired. Later, Greenberg wrote a novel called In This Sign (1970), a story about the struggles a deaf couple face in raising a child who can hear.

One of Greenberg's subsequent novels, Where the Road Goes (1998), however, emphasizes another point of interest for the author. This novel tells the story of a grandmother who decides to reestablish her political activism of years gone by and to undertake a walk across the nation to raise awareness for environmental issues.

Besides her writing career, Greenberg taught at the Colorado School of Mines, an engineering school. She started there as an anthropology professor, wanting to teach her students, as they began their mining careers and traveled all over the world, that they would have to understand not only the basic elements of the earth but also the characteristics of people of different cultures. Later in her career, Greenberg became a creative writing teacher. She also traveled around the nation, helping writers hone their skills at conferences and workshops. She even traveled as far as Japan, teaching U.S. soldiers there how to improve their writing.

Greenberg is the mother of two sons, and as of 2005 she lives in Colorado with her husband.