Joy Castro[1] is the award-winning author of the recently published novels, One Brilliant Flame,[2] and Flight Risk,[3] a finalist[4] for a 2022 International Thriller Award; the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water,[5] which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home,[6] which have been published in France by Gallimard's historic Série Noire; the story collection How Winter Began;[7] the memoir The Truth Book;[8] and the essay collection Island of Bones,[9] which received the International Latino Book Award.
"[15] Of Flight Risk, Melissa Scholes Young said, in Fiction Writers Review:[31] "Even when relying on our own roots, we are excavating the generations who walked this road before we set a foot upon it.
Reclaiming those roots as part of our own identity rather than covering them for the smoother path is also an act of revolution, especially when that existence was impoverished.
When the narrator in Flight Risk comments that hunger is a secret to keep and claims the shame of wanting food in an abundant world, there is a revelation that readers must wrestle with their own indictment in.
Introducing Castro's recent short fiction, "Ein Haus am Meer," in The Brooklyn Rail,[18] Will Chancellor said, "the story's pacing, mood, and questioning achieve the aim of great ekphrasis: to capture transitory, elusive beauty and communicate its vital energy."