The Desert Nights, Rising Stars
Writers Conference

Joy Young is a poet, storyteller and creator of zines and books based in Phoenix Arizona. Their performance work has been featured on Button Poetry and Everyday Feminism as well as on stages and in colleges and classrooms across the country. They are the cofounder and editor of Prickly Pear Printing, a project dedicated to highlighting written and visual work with a focus on growth, beauty, and the celebration of bodies and narratives often silenced. Whether creating storytelling curriculum for restorative justice and community engagement projects, running workshops that explore identity and what it means to be human, or performing their own poetry and prose, Joy's work seeks to cultivate strong personal narratives within a larger social justice context, which is why they were selected as the recipient of the 2018 Phoenix Mayor's Arts Award for literary artist of the year. Joy is also the host of The Storyline Slam at Changing Hands and was recently named the best storyteller in Phoenix of 2019 by the Phoenix New Times.