ABOUT

Joy Amina Garnett is an artist and writer from New York, currently living in Los Angeles. She holds a BA from McGill University, where she studied English literature and classical Arabic, and an MFA in painting from the City College of New York. Joy studied colloquial Arabic as an undergraduate at the American University in Cairo, and painting at L’École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-arts in Paris. In 2024, she was awarded a writing fellowship at Yaddo to work on her first book, The Bee Kingdom (Gaudy Boy, December 2026), an advance excerpt of which was Longlisted for the 2024 First Pages Prize in Creative Nonfiction. The book weaves together archival materials, memories, travelogs, research, and fragments of imagined histories as it follows the author’s search for her late maternal grandfather, the influential Egyptian poet and beekeeper Ahmed Zaky Abushady (1892-1955). Excerpts from this work-in-progress, as well as Joy’s short stories and other writings, have appeared in Evergreen Review, Ping-Pong, Arab Urbanism Magazine, Rusted Radishes, ellipse: journal of translation, Nashville Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Two Coats of Paint, and Full Blede. She has contributed chapters to several books, including Cultural Entanglement in the Pre-Independence Arab World: Arts, Thought, and Literature (Bloomsbury, 2020); The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook (powerHouse Books, 2016); Virilio and Visual Culture, and The Virilio Dictionary (both published by Edinburgh University Press, 2013); and Virilio Now: Current Perspectives in Virilio Studies (Polity, 2011). Joy’s honors include the prestigious Anonymous Was A Woman Award in painting, residencies at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Creative Commons Dubrovnik, and grants from United States Artists, Therese Ralston McCabe Connor Fund, Chipstone Foundation Milwaukee, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Wellcome Trust, London, UK.
Joy’s artwork has been exhibited widely, notably at MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum of American Art, FLAG Art Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Artists Space, Smack Mellon, White Columns, Center for Book Arts, New York Academy of Sciences, Milwaukee Art Museum, Bristol Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft Portland, Boston University Art Gallery, National Academy of Sciences, Wellcome Trust (London, UK), and the Witte Zaal (Ghent, Belgium).

Contact: joy.garnett [@] gmail.com