Joy Roulier Sawyer

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, Tongues of Men and Angels (White Violet Press), and Lifeguards (Conundrum Press), and is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee. Joy's poetry, essays, and fiction appear in Books & Culture, LIGHT Quarterly, Lilliput Review, Mars Hill Review, New York Quarterly, St. Petersburg Review, Theology Today, and others. She also holds a master's degree in counseling, and her professional training in writing therapy gives her special interest and expertise in writer's block, writing exercises, and the writing process. For her longtime work in the field, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association for Poetry Therapy. In addition to her regular workshops, Joy helps facilitate Lighthouses's Hard Times community outreach workshops at the Central, Arvada, and Edgewater Libraries, as well as Writing to Be Free, a workshop for women transitioning out of incarceration. She is the recipient of the 2019 Lighthouse Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence.