SURPRISED BY JOY, A Wising Up Anthology Editors: Charles D. Brockett and Heather Tosteson

JOY. It’s out of our control–unpredictable, illogical, transitory, all-consuming. It can shatter our most basic assumptions. It can heal. It isn’t an idea. It is far more than a body state. It can come to us at the strangest times–in the depths of despair or the height of frustration, when we’re most lonely or when we’re most fully embraced, or just absently mindedly staring off into space. It is transforming, but it does not take us out of ourselves or our situations. It is, in itself, an answer that gives birth to very different questions, ones we may not have known how to ask–about the real, but unpredictable, good in us and the world around us. But it is easy in times of tumult and anger to forget that this experience of joy–and what flows from it–may be more lasting than our outrage. In this anthology forty-three contemporary writers help us explore, through fiction, poetry, and memoir, how experiences of joy help shape us and our relationship with the world around us. CONTRIBUTORS: Patricia Barone, Zan Bockes, Lauren K Carlson, Joe Cottonwood, Susan Cowger, Margaret DeRitter, Joan Dobbie, Terri Elders, Jennifer L. Freed, Andrew Paul Grell, Patrick Cabello Hansel, Andrea Hansell, Linda Hansell, J.O. Haselhoef, Margaret Hasse, Lowell Jaeger, Daniel M. Jaffe, Laurie Klein, Kerry Langan, Lori Levy, Charissa Menefee, Felicia Mitchell, Kristin Bryant Rajan, Zack Rogow, Mary Kay Rummel, Frank Salvidio, Terry Sanville, Jan Sarchio, Deborah A. Schmedemann, Pegi Deitz Shea, Ruth Margolin Silin, Laurence Snydal, J. J. Steinfeld, Alison Stone, Kelly Talbot, Mark Tarallo, Don Thackrey, Heather Tosteson, Claudia Van Gerven, Rosemary Volz, Ken Wise, Weihua Zhang, Jana Zvibleman