Joanna Maharis, born under the name Kiki Stamatiou, hails from Kalamazoo, MI, United States of America. She is the oldest of three children, daughter of a book keeper and fisherman. After graduating from Western Michigan University in 1992, she competed in many literary competitions, where she was awarded honorable mention awards for her poetry and prose, was a finalists in the 2003 Poet of the Year Competition sponsored by Cader Publishing Ltd. She has received three Poet of Merit Awards from The International Library of Poetry, and received numerous other awards for her poetry. In October of 1994, she became an Herbalife Distributer, where she also taught at numerous seminars, until January of 1996. She left Herbalife to focus intensely on her writing endeavers. From August 9, 1997 to March 3, 2002, she worked at Ryan's Family Steakhouse. After getting laid off she focused on getting her first novel published. She achieved her goal when her novel DOMINICA'S INFERNO was published by PublishAmerica in April 2006.

Writing has been her passion since she was the tender age of six, when she began writing poetry and fiction, in addition to writing plays of which she, her two brothers, her cousins and school friends performed in, as well as took turns in directing the projects which they performed for their families.

Her favorite writers are Homer, William Shakespeare, Ralph Ellison, Leo Tolstoy, Laura Ingalls Wilder, J. K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, Christopher Paolini, and Oscar Wilde, just to name a few.