Category Joy’s Work

The Guardian: Sex and the Sea Snail

For The Guardian, I got to witness researchers attempt to spawn the endangered white abalone, giant marine snails that live off the California coast.It was a surprisingly uplifting and hopeful experience, despite all the challenges these creatures face (including the…

Reading With Atmosphere Press

I had the pleasure of reading with Katherine Elberfeld and Allyson S. Barkley at the Playa Flamingo Live Author Reading. If you’re interested in Atmosphere Press’s writing residency in Costa Rica, which I attended last year, you can watch here:

Short Story: Kim

And for the first publication of 2026, I have a short-short up over at Every Day Fiction called Kim. Read here!

My Play: Mrs. Dickens’ Christmas Dinner

I wrote a play! Well, co-wrote it with Marcia Simmons. It’s a Christmas comedy about Charles Dickens and his wife Kate. Here’s a description from the Petaluma Argus-Courier. “Set on Christmas Eve 1841, the story drops us in on the…

Pushcart Special Mention

What a delightful surprise to learn my short story, The Bear, was a Special Mention in the 2026 Pushcart Prize anthology!

Alta: Last West Play

I wrote about a new play, Last West, about the photographer Dorothea Lange. Read here!

Costa Rica Writing Residency

Completely blown away by my Costa Rica writing residency, courtesy of Atmosphere Press. I worked on the balcony as much as possible because, look at the view! Costa Rica is a wonderful place. I went on a boat. There were…

Alta: Vigilantes at the Door

For Alta, I wrote about Langston Hughes’s time in Carmel, California in 1933. As a Communist and a black man, he became the target of Conservative aggression and violence. So he wrote his short story collection The Ways of White…