Joy Gaines-Friedler

Born in Detroit, Joy Gaines-Friedler traveled with a band cross-country when she was twenty-one. It was that road trip that brought her to Los Angeles where she enrolled in Artography Academy and studied photography with Hank Stein a New York based photographer. She returned to Detroit where for twenty years she made her living as a photographer. After the deaths of her two best friends, one from AIDS, the other in the rage of domestic violence, she began a path of serious study of History, Literature, & Literary Theory. Poetry became her bailiwick. Joy went on to teach Creative Writing for non-profits & communities 'at risk.' She's taught male 'lifers' in prison, asylum seekers sheltered in Detroit, young women & men adjudicated & in community control, women in secure shelters, & for literary arts programs, including InsideOut Detroit, & Springfed Arts. She is a visiting writer at universities & teaches on-going private workshops in her home. Her poetry has won many awards, including, among others, multiple Pushcart Prize nominations, The Poetry Society of Michigan Margo Lagattuta Poetry Prize, an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, The Marjorie J. Wilson Award for Excellence in Poetry, The Litchfield Review Series Contest. Poetry, she says, suits the needs of the human spirit to be recognized rather than insulted or commodified. It entertains us with meaning.