A Writer and Poet in Conversation: Being Vulnerable

Joan Brooks Baker and Peter Goodwin

Excerpts from their Short Stories, Ballads and Poems

Joan Brooks Baker is an author, photographer, and native of New York City who has made Santa Fe, NM, her home since 1982. Baker’s first book, The Magnolia Code (Fresco, 2020), was named an Independent Press Awards Distinguished Favorite and was a finalist in the New Mexico–Arizona Book Awards. Learn more about Joan Brooks Baker at joanbrooksbaker.com.

Peter Goodwin is a quasi-native New Mexican, claiming early residence at one month of birth first in Tesuque, then Nambe, New Mexico. He then moved East for his education and upbringing until returning to Santa Fe in 1969 after a period of time studying and working in Europe and Mexico. In the 1980’s, he left a life of professional archaeology to become a social activist that culminated in a stint on the Santa Fe City Council and then for the next 19 years lived as a drug counselor to ex-inmates, gang members, and domestic violence victims in Rio Arriba County, northern New Mexico. He has realized we can all become trapped as unconscious prisoners to ourselves and our past so has sought over time to free himself from that bondage. He has taken up writing and poetry to share these experiences.

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