Jo Guasasco (Meador) was born in San Francisco at the end of World War II, the second daughter of an Irish-Italian family which bestowed upon her three gifts—a capacity for deep love, a diverse and rich cultural heritage, and a curiosity for the community and world around her. Chatter, stories, music, and art filled her imagination with the tools of storytelling and music making. In school she liked reading and writing best of all and began to keep a daily journal which has continued her whole life. She eventually graduated with a BA degree in liberal arts and took a job in teaching music and English in high school.

Jo worked many clerical jobs navigating gap years in her educational goals. From “girl friiday” at the Humane Society to price up-down checker at a department store, to shipping clerk at a steel factory, Jo acquired skills at many levels of business administration and data management, skills which fed into her later work as a computer systems analyst while acclimating her skills to business world as well as adjusting to a man’s world. Eventually she found a training opportunity that led to a job in computing. The lack of general knowledge about this field, provided great opportunity for Jo to teach and write about her experiences as she learned her trade.

Invitations to speak at national conferences followed as well as opportunities to teach and work with others to develop college level curricula for data management. She proposed a trade journal and became its consulting editor. As Jo succeeded in nonfiction writing, she longed to return to the path she abandoned, writing fiction and poetry. She began taking classes in fiction at the university, attending writing conferences. After retiring from her “day job” she finally achieved a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Northwest Literary Institute in Washington.

Today Jo writes on Whidbey Island in Washington state with her fellow explorer and faithful editor, Ed Meador.