Category Joy’s Work

Short Story: Breaking In

I have a short story in the Winter/Spring 2020 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review. It’s called Breaking In. Excerpt: The ghost horses run at night. They’ve reverted to roaming the earth in troops, their gallop a rumble preceding trains and…

Short Story: The Pigeon Carrier

I have a short story at the Atticus Review. It’s called The Pigeon Carrier. Excerpt: The man wore a holey tee-shirt and a trucker hat over greasy hair. In one hand, he was talking on a cell phone the size…

Short Story: Hand To Mouth

I have a creepy little story up at Flash Fiction Magazine. Someone once told me this story permanently changed how they saw gloves. Read Hand To Mouth.

Article: Lost Beneath Lake Berryessa

Check out my Alta article about the town of Monticello in Napa, which was turned into a lake and reservoir in the 1950s. Dorothea Lange documented the human and environmental toll that went into creating Lake Berryessa. Excerpt: Goat Island…

Hello 2020!

Hello 2020! For the first day of the new year, I took a falconry lesson on a cliff in La Jolla, California. A lanner falcon swooped through the air and landed on my arm while the ocean crashed below and…

NOVEL COMING IN 2021

I can FINALLY announce that my first novel, Right Back Where We Started From, is forthcoming from Blackstone Publishing in 2021. Ahhhhhhh!

2019 Discovered Awards for Emerging Literary and Visual Artists

I’m beyond honored to announce that I’m a recipient of the 2019 Discovered Awards for Emerging Literary and Visual Artists, produced by Creative Sonoma and funded by grants from Community Foundation Sonoma County and the National Endowment for the Arts.…

Essay: The Houses My Father Built

For Curbed, I wrote about my childhood for the first time. My earliest sense memories are of construction: the smell of freshly sawed wood, the sound of hammering. I remember being in an airy, half-built room, picking up bent nails…

Notable Essay In The Best American Essays 2019

I was delighted to discover that my essay, Bohemian Tragedy: The rise, fall, and afterlife of George Sterling’s California arts colony was a Notable in The Best American Essays 2019. The essay originally appeared in the Poetry Foundation. You can…

Story On Front Page Of The Washington Post!

Last week, the Kincade Fire tore through Sonoma County, where I live, and 200,000 people were evacuated. My town of Petaluma became the first stop for evacuees. I interviewed some of the evacuees for The Washington Post. Hearing their stories…

Hypatia-in-the-Woods Residency

In September, I had the honor of spending two weeks at a writing residency hosted by Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Washington. During that time, I stayed in a cabin called Holly House and worked on my current novel. Here’s the living room:…

I Was On A Podcast About Jack London

Speaking of Alta, I was also on their podcast talking about my article on Jack London. Listen here! (The above picture makes me laugh.)