joj

joj (they/them @jojthefirst) is a France-based American nonbinary writer of creative nonfiction. They are a self-described collector of underutilized graduate degrees, the most recent (2020) an MA in Creative Writing from Ball State University. Their work explores themes of place, class, queerness, parenthood, infant loss, plant medicine, and the nomadic/peripatetic. Their writing has appeared in Insider, Parents, Yes!, Five Minutes, and The Matador Network. While at Fish Factory, they worked on LIKE SHELLIN’ PEAS, a memoir about being a teenage birthmother, a work that celebrates choice and alternative family construction. But beyond that, their time at Fish Factory became a renaissance of their love for experimentation, adventure, and honest vulnerability.

“I went to Fish Factory to revise a birthmother narrative I wrote over a decade ago. And I did make great strides on that project. But the way the late winter sunlight hits the snow and water and rocks in Stödvarfjördur… it became a siren song, drawing me from my writing cave once a day to stroll along the waves or hike up into the mountain to watch snowstorms move across the waves below. And any time my writing energy waned, there were generous, patiently-instructive fellow artists eager to share their skills and processes–I learned how to throw clay! My hands made beautiful things out of dirt! They photographed, filmed, and cheered as I plunged into the freezing arctic brine! And, I felt so held, supported, and enabled by the Fish Factory crew that I now see them as chosen family. I definitely left a fat chunk of my heart in Stödvarfjördur.”