An Introduction

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Joan Fernandez writes and speaks about women who changed history from the margins — and she brings an unusual pair of credentials to it. She is a historical fiction author whose debut novel won a 2025 Gold Medal from Readers’ Favorite and a 2024 American Writing Award. She also spent thirty-six years in marketing, twenty-two of them at Edward Jones, where she became a general partner — a career spent doing professionally what her subject did by instinct in 1891: building a reputation out of nothing.

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That combination shapes every talk she gives. Saving Vincent: A Novel of Jo van Gogh tells the true story of the widow who inherited hundreds of unsellable canvases, a young son, and a brother-in-law’s ruined name — and turned all three into the Van Gogh legacy the world knows. Joan tells that story two ways: as narrative history, for audiences who love art, biography and women’s lives, and as a strategy case study, for audiences who want to know exactly how Jo did it. Libraries, museums and book clubs book the first. Investor groups, innovation centers and women’s leadership events book the second. A growing number of hosts book both, as a two-part program.

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She has presented to libraries, museums, colleges, lifelong-learning networks and national conferences, and serves as a recurring panelist on ethics and historical truth-telling for writers and educators. She founded the Historical Fiction Affinity Group within the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, now nearly two hundred authors strong, and publishes essays every other week on women’s resilience, creative reinvention and second-act careers. Audiences engage, ask questions past the closing minute, and buy books — and a number of hosts have invited her back for a second and third engagement.

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She divides her time between St. Louis and Sedona, Arizona, where the meals are cooked by her Cuban husband and most of the storytelling is done by her grandkids.