More About Joy
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Originally from Buffalo NY, Joy graduated from Bard College, where she studied writing and literature. After two years teaching high school English in NYC as part of Teach for America, Joy switched gears to pursue writing full-time. She holds an MFA from The New School, where she also taught as a TA under music journalist and cultural critic Greil Marcus. In 2016, after leaving NYC for Western MA's Pioneer Valley (Northampton MA), Joy founded Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop, a literary arts organization (now virtual) with a commitment to creating literary community and teaching writing through craft-based workshops and seminars.
Joy's short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Fairy Tale Review, Conjunctions, Tin House, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, SmokeLong Quarterly, New Ohio Review, PANK, and F(r)iction, among others, and she was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize (by Ploughshares). Her short stories have received recognition from numerous contests, including The 2017 Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions, Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest (Honorable Mention for "How to Survive on Land"), and the 2023 Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (3rd place) for "We Are Sorry For Your Suffering" (now forthcoming in One Story). |
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One of her novels-in-progress - How to Survive on Land, based on her short story of the same title - has been generously supported by grants from The Elizabeth George Foundation and The Speculative Literature Foundation, and the first chapter has been longlisted at The Master's Review Novel Excerpt Contest (2024). Another novel-in-progress, The House of Love, has also been longlisted in The Master's Review Novel Excerpt Contest (2021) and was an Honorable Mention in CRAFT Literary's First Chapter Contest (2022).
Joy has received residencies and fellowships from Yaddo, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, The Kerouac Project, and Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She was the Margaret Bridgman Scholar in Fiction at The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference (2018) and a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference (2021).
Joy has served as Associate Fiction Editor at the literary magazine West Branch and has been part of admissions boards for Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and a guest judge for the Teach! Write! Play! fellowship at Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She has moderated panels at a number of conferences, including Grub Street's Muse & The Marketplace (2022) and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Association of Writers & Writing Program (AWP) conference, in which she led panels on The Power of Genre-Bending in Fiction, The Literary Ghost Story, Playing with Structure in the First Novel, and Ghosts, Portals, & Otherworlds: The Surreal in Contemporary Fiction.
Joy lives in Northampton MA and is at work on three novels and a collection of short stories. She's represented by Peter Steinberg at United Talent Agency (UTA) and Sean Daily at Hotchkiss, Daily, & Associates (for film/TV).
Fun facts: Joy plays the bagpipes and is part of the Holyoke Caledonian band, the oldest continually playing pipe band in North America. She is also a proud alumna of Aurora Waldorf School in Western NY, where she was part of the first graduating class.
Joy has received residencies and fellowships from Yaddo, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, The Kerouac Project, and Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She was the Margaret Bridgman Scholar in Fiction at The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference (2018) and a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference (2021).
Joy has served as Associate Fiction Editor at the literary magazine West Branch and has been part of admissions boards for Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and a guest judge for the Teach! Write! Play! fellowship at Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She has moderated panels at a number of conferences, including Grub Street's Muse & The Marketplace (2022) and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 Association of Writers & Writing Program (AWP) conference, in which she led panels on The Power of Genre-Bending in Fiction, The Literary Ghost Story, Playing with Structure in the First Novel, and Ghosts, Portals, & Otherworlds: The Surreal in Contemporary Fiction.
Joy lives in Northampton MA and is at work on three novels and a collection of short stories. She's represented by Peter Steinberg at United Talent Agency (UTA) and Sean Daily at Hotchkiss, Daily, & Associates (for film/TV).
Fun facts: Joy plays the bagpipes and is part of the Holyoke Caledonian band, the oldest continually playing pipe band in North America. She is also a proud alumna of Aurora Waldorf School in Western NY, where she was part of the first graduating class.
Artist Statement
Stylistically and thematically, I'm interested in “distortion…to get at truth" (Flannery O'Connor) in order to better explore the strangeness of existence and the human condition. I’m drawn to stories that incorporate elements of the fantastic, that push outside of boundaries. In particular, I’m interested in borderlands, thresholds and doorways, as places where deep transgression - and transformation - often take place, and almost all of my stories showcase these interests. Over my years of writing, teaching, and publishing short fiction, I've become more interested in the fantastic as a way of tackling the bigger, broader questions of existence, life/death, memory, and identity, as well as human longing, which is at the heart of much of what I'm exploring through fiction. I also feel a special kinship with mythology, fairy tales, and authors like Oscar Wilde and Hans Christian Andersen, who helped me (as a younger writer) realize the kind of stories I loved most: stories where the longing leaps off the page, where defiance and striving in the face of the impossible somehow—through pure determination—lead to transformation. I’m also inspired by genre-bending writers such as Angela Carter, Karen Russell, Aimee Bender, George Saunders, Madeline Miller, and Kelly Link, to name just a few of the many I love.
Honors & Awards
- Nancy Zafris Short Story Fellowship Winner, The Porches (2025)
- Pushcart Prize nomination, for "Frog Heart", Ploughshares (2024)
- Winner (Third Place) for "We Are Sorry For Your Suffering", Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest (2023)
- Residency, The Ragdale Foundation (2023)
- Writer-in-Residence, The Kerouac Project (2023)
- Tennessee Williams Scholar, Sewanee Writers' Conference (2021)
- Fellowship / Residency, Yaddo (2019)
- Fellowship / Residency, Vermont Studio Center (2019)
- Teach! Write! Play! Fellowship, Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing (2018)
- Margaret Bridgman Scholar in Fiction, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference (2018)
- Grant awardee, The Elizabeth George Foundation (2018)
- Gulliver Travel Research Grant, The Speculative Literature Foundation (2017)
- Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions of 2017, for "Night Circus," published in PANK, Wigleaf (2017)
- Honorable Mention, Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest ("How to Survive on Land'), Ploughshares (2016)
- Winner, Flash Fiction Contest, F(r)iction Magazine (2016)
- Winner (Fourth Place, for "End Grain"), NYC Midnight (2016)
- Mary McCarthy Award in Writing, Bard College (2007)