Joan Konner was born Joan Barbara Weiner in Paterson, New Jersey on February 24, 1931. She received a bachelor's degree in 1951 from Sarah Lawrence College and a master's degree in 1961 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her first job was for The Bergen Record in New Jersey, but she left within two years for public television. When she was laid off, she took a job writing and reporting at WNBC-TV in New York before returning to public television in 1977. She was a television executive, producer, and documentarian. She was the executive producer of Bill Moyers Journal and then the president and executive producer of Moyers' production company, Public Affairs Television. She produced more than 50 documentaries and television series including Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, She Says/Women in News, and The Mystery of Love. Her work won 16 Emmys, a Peabody Award, and an Alfred I. du Pont Award. In 1988, she became dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She wrote or edited a several books including The Atheist's Bible and You Don't Have to Be Buddhist to Know Nothing. She died of leukemia on April 18, 2018 at the age of 87.