Joy Shayne Laughter
JOY SHAYNE LAUGHTER was born and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, the fourth generation of her family to grow up there, and in the second generation to graduate from Indiana University. Her education in Theater helped her through years of eclectic (and hectic, occasionally dyspeptic) employment, from snake-handling at a children’s museum to recruiting star faculty for a renowned holistic education and conference center. Joy has been an actress, singer, storyteller, teacher, staff and freelance journalist, administrative assistant, performance artist, experimental ritualist, theater usher and housecleaner. She has explored religions and spiritual paths from all over the world, settling finally into Buddhism, with a soft spot for the fat, laughing fellow.
Joy joined Samsara Films in 2002 as a co-producer for the feature documentary Kumbh Mela: Songs of the River (2004), an impressionistic record of the great Hindu spiritual festival on the Ganges that Joy attended in 2001 with the film’s director, Nadeem Uddin. Joy has developed several other short documentary films with Uddin and Samsara Films.
Fifteen years learning the screenwriting craft prepared Joy for fiction writing. Her feature scripts earned a quarterfinalist spot in the 1997 Cinestory competition, and a proud semi-finalist position in the 1991 Nicholl Fellowship competition. Her first novel, Yü, was the second-place winner in the 2006 Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation Fiction Contest, and was also a finalist in the Adult Mainstream Novel category at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s 2006 Literary Contest. Joy’s short story, “Armistice Night,” was an Adult Short Story finalist in the same competition.
Joy is working on the second Ross Lamos Mystery, "The Chocolate Sutra," and her short story, "The Stronger" is now in print in the Bacopa Literary Review.
Joy resides in Bloomington, Indiana again, after two decades in Seattle, Washington and two years in New York City. She is a local news reporter and anchor for the community radio station, WFHB.
