Joyce Ray

Joyce Ray is the author of Feathers & Trumpets, A Story of Hildegard of Bingen, a YA historical novel that won two awards. Shanta and the Calling Eyes, her picture book manuscript written in collaboration with Shanta Chaudhary and set in Nepal, was a Finalist in the 2021 Astra International Picture Book Contest. Ray also co-authored Women of the Pine Tree State: 25 Maine Women You Should Know. Her picture book collection of haibun poems inspired by her volunteer work at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan, Food for All Our Tomorrows, Poems on Seed, Soil, and Sustainability, will be published in June, 2023. She is currently revising a middle grade coming-of-age novel set in Maine.

A former elementary school educator, Ray attended the university of Maine at Orono and holds degrees from Rutgers and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She received an artist’s grant for poetry from the Vermont Studio Center.

Ray grew up in Benton, Maine and now lives in Dunbarton, New Hampshire and Oakland, Maine.