Author Biography
Joan Gannij was born in New York City, raised in Hollywood, and has been based in Amsterdam since 1987. She is an award-winning children’s book author, poet and a respected jazz and pop lyricist, and recently completed a memoir, One-Way Ticket: on my way to Here. As a journalist, she has earned a reputation for making photographs of the people she has written about. Among them, Muhammad Ali, Joan Baez, Steven Spielberg, Henry Miller, Jane Fonda, Martin Scorsese, and Charles Bukowski. She has exhibited her portraits of the iconic writer in Helsinki, London, and Amsterdam, and in October, 2025, had a premiere exhibition entitled? East of Western: Close Ups of Charles Bukowski, in Los Angeles at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Centre. That same month she was a keynote speaker at an international conference in Monterey California: “Henry Miller in the 21st Century.”