PAMELA JOHNSON was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and migrated to Berkeley, California, in 1966. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UC Berkeley in anthropology, she went on to earn master’s degrees in education at Mills College and in English at Holy Names University, both in Oakland, California. She is the author of Heart of a Pirate/ A Novel of Anne Bonny and the A Nation of Mystics trilogy. A former teacher and university professor, she is actively involved in social and environmental issues and views her writing as an extension of her politics. She is married and currently divides her time between a ranch in the Sierra foothills of California and Ocho Rios, Jamaica.