BettyJoyce's novel, Everybody Here is Kin, Madville Publishing 2023.
Upcoming Events/Appearances:
WriteOn Door County (Zoom) 6pm-8pm EST, Thurs., Oct. 24,
Revalation Vineyards, Fri., Nov. 1, 2024, 5: 30 pm-7:30 pm: Book World Meets Wine World
710 Hebron Valley Road, Madison, Virginia 22727
Hampton Roads Writers Thurs., Nov. 7-Sat., Nov. 9, 2024
Holiday Inn, Virginia Beach - Norfolk Hotel & Conference Center
5655 Greenwich Road, Virginia Beach, VA 23462
Past:
Richmond, Va., West End Library, free writing with BettyJoyce May 13, 2024
Bluebird Bookstore, with Jody Hobbs Hesler, April 2024
Virginia Festival of the Book, March 2024, Moseley Writers' first-100 words critique
All Good Books, Columbia, S.C., December 2023
Taboo Breaking LIterary Fiction, Book People, with Jody Hobbs Hesler & A.D. Nauman, October 2023
The Book Cellar, Chicago, IL, October 2023
Official book launch, September, 2023, New Dominion Books, Charlottesville, VA.
A Moveable Feast, September 2023, Pawley's Island, S.C.
Here's what writers say about "Kin:"
"In her beautiful Everybody Here is Kin, BettyJoyce Nash has laid bare the ways our blood betrays and restores us. The book is a powerful exploration of love's shadowy forms, and the ways our relationships are as shaped by desire as they are by the places we've called home, the places we keep running from and toward."
—Bret Anthony Johnston, international best-selling author: We Burn Daylight (2024), Remember Me Like This, and the short story collection Corpus Christi. He directs the Michener Center for Writers at U-T Austin.
"In Everybody Here is Kin, BettyJoyce Nash tells a coming-of-age tale that challenges notions of motherhood, both familial and as guardians of the earth. Lucille is a girl on the brink of adolescence whose intelligence is matched only by her intuitive knowledge of the natural world—where she's been left to monitor her two younger step-siblings. This story transcends time and place and will be a joy for anyone who loves this transient world.
—Gale Massey, award winning author (The Girl from Blind River, Rising and Other Stories)
"This novel makes your heart swell, waterlogged with love and admiration. BettyJoyce Nash's heroine, 13-year-old Lucille, worries about the planet sinking into the ocean, even as everyone in her life is going under, including the cranky motel manager, Will. Whom can she save and whom can she trust? Living inside Lucille's head is a rare treat in BettyJoyce Nash's astute, funny, and poignant book."
—Mary Kay Zuravleff (American Ending, Man Alive!, The Bowl is Already Broken, and The Frequency of Souls.)
BettyJoyce Nash's debut novel, Everybody Here is Kin, placed (first runner up)in the Eric Hoffer prize category commercial fiction. Her short story, "The Forever Project," appears in Reckon Review; essays and stories have aired on NPR, appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, North Dakota Quarterly, Broad River Review, Across the Margin, and elsewhere. A MacDowell fellow in 2013, BettyJoyce won the F. Scott Fitzgerald prize in 2015, and honorable mention in 2013 (Ron Rash prize.) She co-edited the short story anthology Lock & Load: Armed Fiction (University of New Mexico Press, 2018.) These stories probe Americans' complicated relationship to firearms. She earned an MSJ from Medill Journalism (Northwestern), and an MFA in fiction (Queens University of Charlotte.) Her fiction has been recognized with fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Thicket, and VCCA-France. She teaches fiction at WriterHouse in Charlottesville; she's taught writing at the University of Richmond and the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. She leads free writing workshops at community locations.