Joanne Derrick is a Wiltshire-based writer and creative writing facilitator. She teaches courses in creative writing and wellbeing at HMP Erlestoke, a category C men’s prison, as well as running groups in the community. She recently organised an exhibition of prisoner writing at Devizes Arts Festival 2026 with charity Friends of Erlestoke Prison. Joanne invited writer Max Porter to become Erlestoke’s first writer in residence and with him edited an anthology of prisoner writing, Lifetime.

Joanne has an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University where she won the Janklow & Nesbit Prize for best manuscript. She has also been involved in events at Salisbury Fringe Festival and recently ran a writing retreat at the Ammerdown Centre in Somerset. With a background in education and publishing, Joanne began writing professionally a few years ago with clients including PBS America, Unilin, and US interiors website Decorated Life. Her poetry was published this year in Printed Resistance 01 by Backlash Press, and she worked on illustrator Bonnie Helen Hawkins’ 52 Crows. Joanne’s passion is novel writing and following attendance at Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in July, she will be editing her psychological thriller, Friendly with Murderers.