I’m honored and excited to share that I was awarded a Courage to Write grant from The de Groot Foundation!

I’m so grateful for their support as I finish up my second novel.

My article Flight of the Condors, originally published in Alta Magazine, was a finalist in the 64th Southern California Journalism Awards. Read the full list of winners here.

Check out this illustration of me in the Spring 2021 issue of Alta!

Hey! I have a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2020.

Read The First and Last Lives of Jack London.

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.

Along with nine other writers and artists, my work will be featured in an exhibit at the Museum of Sonoma County, which is opening tonight, November 22, and runs through February 22. An excerpt of my current novel will be featured as part of the exhibit. (Read more about it here.) If you’re in town, I hope you’ll check it out.

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 read it here.

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:

There was a little loft upstairs, and I spent most of my time sitting on the bed with my laptop.

I got so much done. I’m grateful to Hypatia-in-the-Woods for the opportunity to focus on the work I most want to be doing.

When not writing, I ran into some nature, like this praying mantis:

And this dome-like spider web:

And the Mima Mounds National Preserve. No one knows what made these mounds–my favorite theory is prehistoric gophers.

This being Washington, there was lots of water around:

All the sea shells on the beach were covered with barnacles. Here I am being horrified about it on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

It's fine it's fine nothing disgusting at all about this

A post shared by joy (@joylanzendorfer) on Sep 11, 2019 at 8:37pm PDT

I’m excited that my short story “Sleep Disturbance” will be included in the 2019 Best Small Fictions Anthology.

“Sleep Disturbance” was published last year in The Forge Literary Magazine. You can read it here.

In September, I attended a writing residency at Wildacres Retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a terrific experience. I can’t say enough about Wildacres and the people who run it. They help all kinds of artists by giving them the gift of time and peace to work, which is valuable and important work.

For my residency, I got to stay in a cabin and write for a week. There was no Internet, cell phone, or distractions. I wasn’t sure if I would like that. I imagined being lonely and restless, but I was delighted to find that I’m a natural hermit. In fact, half the time I didn’t even leave the cabin to go to meals. (Don’t worry–I stopped at a grocery store on the way there.)

Here’s the outside of the cabin:

The inside had a full kitchen, a king-sized bed, and a table where I spent most of my time working:

I also worked on the deck until I figured out that North Carolina bugs really like to bite me.

It was inspiring to be in a forest, especially since my book is set in a forest. I saw so many animals while there. I saw a bear, first of all. (I was in my car.) I saw a doe and a fawn. I saw tiny owls, butterflies that looked like fall leaves, lizards with blue tails, and the strangest spider ever, the Arrowshaped Micrathena.

The Blue Ridge Mountains is one of the most beautiful places in the United States and I plan to keep going back. While at Wildacre, I took tons of pictures of the Blue Ridge Parkway, all while singing this song to myself.

In June I went to the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency. It was the first year they had the residency, which was located on Cuttyhunk Island, near Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. I’d never heard of it before.

Along with 14 other writers, I studied with the author Paul Harding. I also wrote about 50 pages in my new book. We stayed at The Avalon, a lovely old inn. Here’s a picture:

The residency was a new experience for me. It made me think a lot about class and how its intersection with literary fiction fundamentally blocks our ability to achieve diversity in literature. Part of my reaction was due to the fact that Cuttyhunk Island is so clearly a place for rich people. Of course, it’s a beautiful place.

I didn’t get a decent picture of my room, so here’s one from the Avalon website.

My room had a balcony where I did a lot of writing. The view from the balcony was also great.

One night, there was a double rainbow.

The beaches are rocky and loaded with wild roses.

East Coast insects hate me. I was stung by a wasp, bitten by spiders, and devoured by mosquitoes. This never happens in California.

There were ticks everywhere. I went down this path, and when I came out the other side, seven ticks were crawling up my legs.

Gross.

I keep thinking I want to move to New England, but it’s really not for me. It was nice to visit though.

Back in New Bedford, I went to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, where Herman Melville set part of Moby-Dick. It was a fascinating, weird place. I took pictures with my phone. This is my favorite.

The horrified face of a northern fur seal once it realizes it must spend eternity as taxidermy in a whaling museum. pic.twitter.com/zw5QnqQfez

— Joy Lanzendorfer (@JoyLanzendorfer) June 15, 2016