Growing up in Memphis Tennessee, Joyce Oscar seems to have always had stories and rhymes in her head. Many days she would sit in her room writing song lyrics and later force her ne...mehr sehenGrowing up in Memphis Tennessee, Joyce Oscar seems to have always had stories and rhymes in her head. Many days she would sit in her room writing song lyrics and later force her neighborhood friends to sing them. By the time she was in high school her love for reading and writing had become stronger. She attributes her love for words and expression to one of her literature instructors at Hillcrest High School.
"I remember sitting in my literature class one day and being given an assignment
and we had to write a story. This was not a story of our choice so to speak.
Our teacher wrote a topic on the board, "She Was Old and Ugly". This phrase was
to be the very first sentence of our paper. I thought this was the craziest thing,
she was always giving us strange writing projects. Well the point of the assignment
was to get us to dig deep and pull out all of those literary terms that we had been learning.
Each one needed to be reflected somehow in that paper. Well I received an "A" and
it was the start of a whole new world for me."
Throughout high school and beyond, Joyce has maintained many journals, but the journals that she wrote as an adult were the ones that gave her the inspiration for her first book of poetry, After Midnight: Love's Journey. She feels that poetry had the power to re-create the human experiences like, falling in love, losing love, facing death and disease and finding God.
"Journaling was my escape from the daily stress. It was a secret between my pen and me.
I never actually thought about writing as being anything other than something I did when
the rest of the world was asleep."
A single mom, Joyce lives outside of Atlanta, Georgia with her two kids. She is an alumnus of the University of Memphis and Mercer University and holds a degree in both Accounting and Information Technology. She is also an advocate of community service and volunteers with community organizations such as The Atlanta All-Stars Talent Network, The Pebblebrook Jr. Falcon Track Team, and the Pebblebrook Beta Phi Step Team.weniger sehen