Jo Anne Salisbury Troxel is a third generation Montanan from the Flathead reservation at Arlee, Montana. She received her undergraduate and Master’s degree from Montana State University. She also attended summer school for 7 years at Christ Church, Oxford, England. She has taught English at a private school, Montana State University, and Bozeman High School, as well as conducting writing workshops in Bozeman and around the state. An activist, she helped organize the local Gallatin Valley Human Rights Task Force. A supporter of the arts, she served on The Montana Arts Council, and was president of Beall Park Art Center in Bozeman, Montana. She has written short stories and essays, and is currently finishing a novel, as well as writing a memoir of her parents who homesteaded in Plentywood, Montana, and were a part of the radical movement there in the 1930's.