Acclaimed Southern Noir

David Joy

A twelfth generation North Carolinian, David Joy grew up in the Piedmont along the Catawba River, moved away at eighteen, and has spent the last 22 years 100 miles west in the mountains of Jackson County. His work is place-driven and deeply rooted to Appalachia, and has been translated into six languages. In 2023, his debut novel was adapted to film starring Billy Bob Thornton and Robin Wright.

Joy is the author of five novels, including Those We Thought We Knew (winner of the 2023 Willie Morris Award and the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Prize), When These Mountains Burn (winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award), The Line That Held Us (winner of the 2018 Southern Book Prize), The Weight of This World, and Where All Light Tends to Go (Edgar finalist for Best First Novel). His stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in a number of publications, most recently Garden & Gun, The New York Times Magazine, and TIME. He is also the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey and a coeditor of Gather at the River: Twenty-Five Authors on Fishing, a book he spearheaded to raise money for the CAST For Kids Foundation.

Joy lives in Tuckasegee, North Carolina with his dog Edie Munster.

Books

Featured Work

The Line That Held Us

The Line That Held Us (2018). A story of friendship and family, this novel is a tale balanced between destruction and redemption, where the only hope is to hold on tight, clenching those you love. From a writer whose stories are “like a pull from a bottle of Appalachian moonshine: smooth and elegant

The Weight of This World

The Weight of This World (2017). A dark, gritty “Appalachian noir” novel about two friends, Thad and Aiden, in rural North Carolina, whose lives are upended after they find a large stash of drugs and cash from a dead dealer, forcing them to confront their traumatic pasts, including Thad’s experiences as a combat veteran and […]

Those We Thought We Knew

Winner of the 2023 Willie Morris Award for Southern FictionWinner of the 2023 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary AwardWinner of the 2024 Sir Walter Raleigh Award From award-winning writer David Joy comes a searing new novel about the cracks that form in a small North Carolina community and the evils that unfurl from its center. Toya […]

When These Mountains Burn

Winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing Acclaimed author and “remarkably gifted storyteller” (The Charlotte Observer) David Joy returns with a fierce and tender tale of a father, an addict, a lawman, and the explosive events that come to unite them. When his addict son gets in deep with […]

Where All Light Tends to Go

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DEVIL’S PEAK—starring Billy Bob Thornton, Robin Wright, Hopper Penn, and Jackie Earle Haley! In the country-noir tradition of Winter’s Bone meets Breaking Bad, a savage and beautiful story of a young man seeking redemption—a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. The area surrounding Cashiers, North Carolina, is home to people […]