Joycelyn lives in Mendocino, California, where she can watch the sun set into the ocean from her living room. It’s a far cry from her native South Mississippi and what she calls her “Southern Gothic” childhood and teenage years.

She earned her BA and MA degrees in English literature at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg and worked for several years as managing editor of The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South. Then she moved to Georgia. In Atlanta for a decade, she was economics research editor and publications director at the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank. At the University of Georgia in Athens she was communications director for the university’s Public Service and Outreach mission.

She retired and relocated to Mendocino in 2014, the same year she completed an MFA degree from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

Having fallen in love with Mendocino during a long weekend following a Federal Reserve meeting in San Franciso, she visited often through the years. Creative community, the natural beauty of the Northern California coast, and the Pacific Ocean kept her coming back.

Relocating to Mendocino did not disappoint, and now in Mendocino she enjoys being active in poetry and other writing groups. She is a member of the Mendocino Writers Club and the California Poets Association and has published poetry in Calyx, Minerva Rising, Persephone’s Daughters, and the Noyo River Review among others. She is the author of Vital Records, her debut poetry book that will be published by Finishing Line Press in late spring.