About Jo Elizabeth Pinto

Jo Elizabeth Pinto was among the first blind students to integrate the public schools in the 1970s when federal laws allowed disabled children to be educated with their peers.

She has two college degrees, one in Human Services from the University of Northern Colorado and another in Nonprofit Management from the Metropolitan State College of Denver. Today, she freelances as an editor and a braille proofreader.

As an author, Pinto entertains her readers while giving them food for thought. In her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she draws on personal experience to illustrate that hope is always an action away.



Pinto lives in Colorado with her husband and their teenage daughter. Their family also includes Pinto’s guide dog Spreckles, a Poodle/Maltese mix called Leo, and an aging family cat called Sam-I-Am.

Early in Jo Elizabeth’s married life, her home became a hangout for troubled neighborhood kids. This experience lit the flame for her first novel, The Bright Side of Darkness, which won a First Place Indie Book Award for “Inspirational Fiction.”