Joanna Kakissis was born in Athens, Greece, and grew up in North and South Dakota and Minnesota. She contributes to the The New York Times, USA Today, World Hum, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and US public radio and has also written for Fodor's and Time Out Athens travel guides. She also taught journalism and essay writing at universities in North Carolina.
Her stories have been distinguished by the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the North Carolina Press Association. She was part of a team of reporters who helped the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC, become a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news reporting for a series of news stories on the massive flooding in eastern North Carolina following Hurricane Floyd in 1999.
She studied political science, journalism and Russian as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and also received an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Though currently based in Athens, she still says "you betcha" and remains a devotee of the Chicago Public Radio show "This American Life."