LitHub: My Year of Smoke
I wrote an essay for Literary Hub. It’s about the California wildfires, Climate Change, and the writing of Frankenstein. Excerpt: The campground in Oregon is foggy in the morning. The air is soft and clean. I walk out of my…
Category Joy’s Work
Article In The New York Times
I’m so happy to have my first piece in The New York Times. I retraced Eugene O’Neill’s footsteps around San Francisco, where he raced to complete his best works before he lost his ability to write. It ran in the…
Essay in Ploughshares: Student Debt and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
I wrote an essay for Ploughshares on Student Debt and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the novel written by Betty Smith. It looks at the difficulty of paying for school, both now, and in Smith’s time. Things have changed, but…
Article in Longreads: Ghost Writer: The Story of Patience Worth, the Posthumous Writer
I wrote an article for Longreads. Check out Ghost Writer: The Story of Patience Worth, the Posthumous Writer. One day in 1913, a housewife named Pearl Curran sat down with her friend Emily Grant Hutchings at a Ouija board. Curran’s…
Learn To Write From The Movies: Kill Your Darlings
I have a new Learn To Write From The Movies up at Barrelhouse. It’s about Kill Your Darlings, a movie about Allen Ginsberg starring Daniel Radcliffe. A sample: Lesson 4: Do Weird 1940s Drugs. Naturally, Burroughs suggests they do drugs.…
Poetry Foundation: Bohemian Tragedy
I wrote an essay for the Poetry Foundation on the poet George Sterling and the Carmel artist colony. It’s a crazy story about artistic utopia, California Bohemians, scandals, affairs, and a suicide pact. Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and HL Mencken…
Learn to Write from the Movies: Magic Beyond Words: The JK Rowling Story
Check out Learn to Write from the Movies: Magic Beyond Words: The JK Rowling Story. Here’s a sample: Lesson 3: Don’t Bother To Write Until A Creepy Ghost Appears To You In A Dream. Good news. You don’t have to…
I Was Interviewed By CNN
I forgot to post this on here! I wonder what else I’ve forgotten. Back in August, I was Interviewed By CNN about Donald Trump. They wanted my opinion because of my article on Vice about How Reality TV Made Donald…
Learn To Write From The Movies: Genius
It’s the next installment of my Barrelhouse column, Learn To Write From the Movies. This time it’s about the movie Genius. Genius is a 2016 movie about Thomas Wolfe, who wrote Look Homeward, Angel, and his editor, Maxwell Perkins. The…
LA Review Of Books: Ted Hughes’s Play About Marriage
I wrote an article for the LA Review of Books on Tight Wires Between Us: On “Difficulties of a Bridegroom” by Ted Hughes. Excerpt: ON FEBRUARY 9, 1963, two days before the poet Sylvia Plath killed herself, a radio play…
Barrelhouse Column: Learn To Write From The Movies
I have a column! It’s called Learn To Write From The Movies and it’s for Barrelhouse. More information: Welcome to a column where we learn how to become the sexy intellectual rock stars that Hollywood says all writers should be.…
I Was On The Radio In Portland, Oregon
I was on XRAY In The Morning in Portland, Oregon talking about my article in The Atlantic Why Aren’t There More Women Working in Audio? You can listen to it online. Hurrah!