Ann Jones

Ann Jones is a writer, journalist, photographer, activist, and humanitarian. She grew up in Wisconsin, studied there and in Vienna, Austria, and received a Ph.D. in literature and history from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) in 1970. She taught at the City College of New York, the University of Massachusetts (where she initiated the Women’s Studies Program), Mount Holyoke College, and other institutions before becoming a full-time writer and journalist.

She is the author of eight books of nonfiction, including a notable series on women and violence headed by Women Who Kill (1980), recently reissued in a 30th-anniversary edition by the Feminist Press as the first title in a series of Contemporary Feminist Classics. Other books in the series are Everyday Death (1985), the story of a woman who killed her husband; When Love Goes Wrong (1992), written with the late Susan Schechter, a guide for women stuck in coercive relationships; and Next Time, She’ll Be Dead (1994, updated 2000), an analysis of aspects of American culture that sustain violence against women. Jones also traveled the world as a journalist and photographer, filing stories on remote environments and cultures for an array of popular periodicals from National Geographic Traveler to Town and Country. She journeyed across Africa in search of a rainmaking, peace-loving queen to write Looking for Lovedu (2001).

After 9/11, she went to Afghanistan to work as a volunteer with women, from prisoners to parliamentarians, and wrote the first of a series of books about war: Kabul in Winter (2006). In 2007-08, she led a special project for the International Rescue Committee in post-conflict countries across Africa and Asia, encouraging women to document their lives through digital photography and speak up for change; the project culminated in an exhibition of women’s photographs at United Nations headquarters in New York and is the basis for Jones’s most recent book, War Is Not Over When It’s Over (2010).

As a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2010-2011), Jones began work on her third book on war—this time studying the impact of America’s current wars on American soldiers, their families and communities, and the United States generally. The Guggenheim Fellowship will enable her to complete this work.

In addition, she continues to report on women, war, and international affairs for The Nation and online for the political site Tomdispatch.com.