J. W. Young's essays have been anthologized by Random House and Dzanc Books. Her most recent published work of short fiction, "Welcome to Avalon," can be found in The Rappahannock Review, along with a short interview. Her essays have been featured in Front Porch, The Apple Valley Review, The Mom Egg, and other magazines and journals. She was a Les Standiford Fellow at Writers in Paradise, and has presented at conferences and readings in and around the American South. Currently, she is working on a crime-thriller novel set in the California High Desert of the late 1990's.
She is a first-generation graduate of The University of California, Irvine. She earned an M.F.A. from The University of Mississippi where she was mentored by Barry Hannah, and, for two years, she was Managing Editor of The Yalobusha Review.
She's a native of Southern California, where the Santa Ana winds and wildfires regularly recreate the landscape. In 1985, her father was arrested and later convicted of a series of rapes in Los Angeles County. The shock, pain, and grief of that event and its aftermath, coupled with the many joys since, have framed her view of the world and are, thematically, at the center of much of her writing.
She currently lives in Georgia, with her husband and their three children, where she teaches Composition, Literature, and Humanities. Find her on Facebook @joyousinhell and Instagram @thejoyousinhell.