Author Biography

 
Joann Green Byrd is a native of eastern Oregon, born in Baker City and reared in Pendleton. Her father grew up in Heppner, so Joann spent many childhood weekends and summer days near Willow Creek.

 

She worked 47 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, starting at the East Oregonian in Pendleton at age 13. After graduating from the University of Oregon, she was a reporter for the Spokane Daily Chronicle, later executive editor of The Herald in Everett, Wash., and ombudsman at The Washington Post.

 

For nine years, Joann was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and with a master's degree in philosophy, she also taught journalism ethics. She had just retired as editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer when she read about the 100th anniversary observance of the Heppner Flood and realized for the first time the scale of the June 14, 1903, disaster.

 

A visit to Heppner and its local history museum and she was captured by the need to learn more about the people who were killed and why they died. The result, after nearly five years of research and writing, is Calamity: The Heppner Flood of 1903, published in August 2009 by the University of Washington Press.

 

 

 

 



Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional