Johanna is the daughter of Bulgarian, Peter Petroff and his Italian wife Maria, who came to Australia in 1949 as assisted migrants. She went to St John's Primary School at Footscray, Victoria, and Footscray Girls' High School. In 1974 she married a Frenchman, but they were divorced in 1980. She has two daughters. She has studied a number of subjects at TAFE including an Intro-Community Services course in 1990, and subjects in Creative Writing in 1993. She has worked in a variety of areas including business, child care and aged care, and in recent years, proprietor/courtship coordinator of Making Friends/Able Introductions SA (1995-8), telephone surveys for Roy Morgan Research, Pre-paid Funeral Consultant for Blackwells Funerals (1998) and now is (1999) a full-time Reiki practitioner. She has been involved in a number of voluntary community activities, including Independent Self-Help, Mormon Ladies Group, Lone Parent Support Service, Grange Womens's Health Centre and Grange Council Disabled Access Project, Friends of the Elderly and Life. Be in it.
Johanna became interested in writing when she was eight, but meeting more ridicule than support, gave up the dream. At 20 she tried again, but again was put off by mockery. At 35 she began to write poems and stories, but this time without showing anyone, until a friend introduced her to The Paddocks writing group, which she found supportive and friendly. She is now a member of the Writers' Centre and is starting an evening writing group in the northern suburbs. She conducted a national writing competition which resulted in the publication of A Collage of Memories (1993) and in 1998 she produced newsletters for the Salisbury Creche Team. As well as the work listed here, her poem "Metal Creature" was accepted by "Poems for Passengers" 1995 and displayed on buses. It won one of six equal second prizes. In 1998 her unpublished poem "The Old Man in the Dinghy" won first prize and "The Young Lover" won 2nd prize in the Your Write Mind Valentine's Day writing competition. In 1989 she wrote and directed a short play on Family Loving for the Mormon Church theatre group. In 1999 she set up the Write 4U writing group at Elizabeth.
