Joan Dash was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 18, 1925, graduated from Barnard College, and currently resides in Seattle, Washington, with her physicist husband, Jay Gregory Dash. They have three children.

Dash, in addition to her writings for young adults, is the author of two adult nonfiction titles. These are A Life of One's Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men They Married (1973), which was later published as A Life of One's Own: Margaret Sanger, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Maria Goeppert-Mayer (1988), and Summoned to Jerusalem: The Life of Henrietta Szold (1979). She is also the author of several short stories and journal articles.

Her first book, A Life of One's Own, contains a biographical sketch of Maria Goeppert- Mayer, who won the Nobel Prize for her work in theoretical physics. Researching and writing about Goeppert-Mayer deepened Dash's interest in women scientists and the obstacles they...