Joanna Barnden (née Gibb; born 1972)[1][2][3][4][5] is a British author of historical fiction who writes as Anna Stuart for her World War II novels and Joanna Courtney for novels set in other periods (Courtney is Barnden's middle name).[4]
After graduating, Barnden worked as a factory planner and started a family, initially writing only in her spare time.[2][8] Her first short story was published in The People's Friend around 2001 and she went on to publish more than two hundred short stories in women's magazines before turning her attention to long-form fiction.[2] For a time around 2013 and 2014 she was a creative writing tutor at the Open University.[9][6]
Her work has been translated into several languages, including French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Spanish, and she has enjoyed considerable success beyond the anglosphere. For example, the French translation of The Midwife of Auschwitz (La Sage-femme d'Auschwitz) had sold over half a million copies by the end of 2024.[10]
Barnden lives in Kirk Langley with her husband Stuart.[4] They have two children.[8]
Publications
As Joanna Barnden
2013 : Running Against the Tide (Robert Hale) — London's docklands in the early nineteenth century
