Joan Alden (June 1, 1944--) is a novelist and children’s book author.

Early Life:

Born Joan Margaret Lindow in Detroit, Michigan, Alden was the middle child of the late Elwood R. Lindow and Margaret Garred Lindow. She has two siblings: Ann L. Castilow, painter and designer, and Thomas E. Lindow, MD, retired physician. Their parents met at Albion College in Michigan in 1939 and married in 1941. Until 1957 Elwood (Ed) Lindow worked at The Detroit Gasket Company, owned and operated by his cousin Lloyd Diehl. In 1952 the family moved from Detroit to the suburb Birmingham. In 1957 Alden’s father joined The Ford Motor Company as Production Manager of its new assembly plant in Lorraine, Ohio and the family moved from Birmingham, Michigan to Rocky River, Ohio. In 1962 Alden attended The Ohio State University where she studied dental hygiene. Alden earned a DHY Associate Degree in 1965 and worked in Ohio and California as a dental hygienist. In 1968 she moved from San Francisco, California to New York City to study acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting. Her parents were then living in England where her father was a Vice President of Ford in charge of European Operations. In 1973 Alden returned to The Ohio State University and received a BS in Education and a MS in Education/Communications. Alden didn’t start writing until she was 34 years old, the same year she contracted MS.

Career:

Alden published her first novel, Mrs. Cooper’s Boardinghouse in 1980 under the name Joan Lindau. In 1989 Alden’s second novel, Letting in the Night, was nominated for a Llambda Literary Award. In 1992, under the name Joan Alden, she published the Children’s Book A Boy’s Best Friend, a selection of the Rainbow Curriculum of New York State, with Catherine Hopkins, whose hand tinted black and white photographs are the illustration. In 1993 Alden published her third novel, Before Our Eyes. From 1999 to 2002, Alden taught English Composition as an adjunct at the Dutchess Community College of SUNY, and from 2003 until 2008, following a move to Charleston, South Carolina, Alden taught English Composition as an adjunct at The Citadel Military College. In 2016, Alden’s fourth novel, When I First Knew, was published.

Personal Life:

Joan Alden has been in two long term relationships with women. In 1969, while studying with Stella Adler, Joan met the late Allyson L. Layne and spent ten years with her. In 1979, she met the photographer and Art Director for Harper & Row of San Francisco, Catherine J. Hopkins. They lived together until Catherine’s death in 1996. In 1991, bared from being married in their church as well as the court house, Joan and Catherine were married by their pastor of St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church of Spencertown, New York, in their home in Catskill, New York where they resided together for eleven years, from 1985 to 1996. In 2003 Alden moved from the Hudson Valley of New York to Charleston, South Carolina, and in 2013 from Charleston to Sarasota, Florida where she currently lives.