j.d. daniels was raised one mile from the small town of St. Charles, Iowa, a place that deeply influences her work.  She discovered her desire to be a writer as a child, listening to her mother read imaginative stories.  j.d. was the one who, if missing, was often found lying on a blanket under an apple tree with a book in her hand.

j.d. is the only one of eight children raised in a working class family to have attended college. She began her college career attending night school while she worked full time for an insurance company in Des Moines.  During this time, she was able to save enough money to attend the University of Iowa the following year.

Two years later, due to the cultural climate of the Midwest, the fact she fell in love and her background, j.d. chose a traditional path and married early, giving up her college education and her strife for a writing career. 

It was during her mid thirties that the call to live the life of a writer resurfaced.  Having returned to college to finish her undergraduate degree, she enrolled in literature and creative writing classes and soon began writing daily.  Throughout her course work, she continued to write and in the end earned a Doctor of Arts degree with a dissertation of her own poetry from Drake University. During her university years, she was accepted into Bread Loaf, but because of family complications, chose not to attend.  Some of the authors she believes have influenced her are as eclectic as her furniture:  Carl Jung, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Carolyn Heilbrun, Agatha Christie, Edgar Cayce and Sylvia Browne.

j.d. has lived in England and taught at a university in Turkey.  She also taught on a ship travelling from Athens to Russia and at other times travelled to India and China.  Where would she like to go next?  Wherever she hasn't been.

She continues to take courses and to attend conferences and seminars as she learns her craft and explores her artform.  Her most recent class was with the Director of Harvard’s Creative Writing Program, Bret Anthony Johnston who she first saw speak at an AWP conference in New York.  Her interests lie in the area of women’s studies and eastern mysticism. She also enjoys reading (and now writing) mysteries, international novels and novels with a woman protagonist.  Her plan is to explore themes pertaining to the struggles and triumphs of women.

j.d. counts as her crowning achievement her two children--Conrad, the President of Lion New Media in Seattle; Danielle, a speech language specialist in Riverside, California.