Jo Ellen Capps Layne was born in Lynchburg, VA, and graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. She has two adult children and one granddaughter. She continues to reside in Lynchburg, VA with her husband. Jo Ellen is the author of the novel Laughter at Dawn as well as a short story, Seasons, and the article American Family.
She based this novel on her thirty-seven years of experience in the mental health field as a social worker, and she has drawn on her knowledge of psychological disorders as a basis for her creative works. Her short story, Seasons, about a long-distance relationship, placed in an international literary competition in 1988.
She also published American Family in Woman’s World about her personal experience of placing her mother in a nursing home.
