J.J. Wilson is a professor emerita of English at Sonoma State University (SSU), a key figure in the development of the Women's Studies Department at SSU, a scholar of Virginia Woolf, and co-founder of The Sitting Room. Wilson was born in 1936 and grew up in Virginia. She completed her BA in political science and French at Stanford University, and PhD in comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Wilson is the author or editor of several works, including Women Artists: Recognition and Reappraisal from the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (1976) with Karen Petersen, and the editor Virginia Woolf Miscellany. In this interview, Wilson discusses growing up in Virginia, including her early education; attending Stanford University and study abroad in France; working with Edwin O. Christensen at the National Gallery of Art; moving to San Francisco in 1959, including jobs and the beatnik scene; graduate work in comparative literature at UC Berkeley; personal research about Virginia Woolf; teaching at Smith College, including observations of gender roles; earning a Rockefeller grant to Japan; returning to California and joining the English Department at SSU, including colleagues, students, and courses; the foundations of the Women's Studies Program at SSU, including students, courses, bureaucratic work, and public programming like "Pandora's Box"; researching and writing Women Artists with Karen Petersen; creation and legacy of The Sitting Room; creation of Virginia Woolf Miscellany; honors and retirement in 2004; and reflections on the field of women's studies.