Joy Sawyer
Criticism, Fiction, Poetry
Joy Roulier Sawyer holds an MA from New York University, where she received the Herbert Rubin Award for Outstanding Creative Writing. The author of several nonfiction books, she's also published two poetry collections, Lifeguards (Conundrum Press) and Tongues of Men and Angels (White Violet Press). Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in Books & Culture, LIGHT Quarterly, Theology Today, and many others.
Since 2009, Sawyer has taught a wide variety of writing and poetry workshops at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, the largest literary center in the West. She also hosts a recurring workshop, Writing for Personal Transformation, which focuses on writing for healing and self-understanding, and helps facilitate many of Lighthouse's community outreach programs, as well as the Denver Central, Arvada, and Edgewater Library's Hard Times writing workshops, designed for people experiencing homelessness, mental health challenges, and other "hard times," as well as Writing to Be Free, a workshop for women transitioning out of incarceration. She was the recipient of Lighthouse's 2019 Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence.
