Passanante, Joy 1947- (Joy Cathey Passanante)

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Passanante, Joy 1947- (Joy Cathey Passanante)

PERSONAL:

Born April 18, 1947, in St. Louis, MO; daughter of Bart Michael and Alberta Passanante; married Gary Williams, June 13, 1970; children: Liza Bryn, Emily Caterina. Education: Attended Sarah Lawrence College, 1965-67; Washington University, St. Louis, MO, A.B., 1969; Cornell University, M.A. T., 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-0001. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

High school English teacher in Homer, NY, 1971-73; freelance writer and editor, 1975—; University of Idaho, Moscow, member of English department faculty, 1977-83, 1988—, communications specialist in College of Business and Economics, 1983-90, currently associate director of creative writing. Consultant to Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, 1991—; mentor, Moscow High School, 1992—; academic adviser to Alpha Phi, Moscow, beginning 1997. Member, Northern Idaho Council on English.

MEMBER:

Athena, Phi Beta Kappa (vice president of Idaho chapter, 1994-95; president, 1995-97), Academy of American Poets.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellowship in fiction, Idaho Commission on the Arts, 1990; Outstanding Faculty Award, University of Idaho Interfraternity Council, 1993; QuickArts grant for poetry, 1997; Teaching Excellence Award, University of Idaho, 2001; Fellowship in poetry, Idaho Commission on the Arts, 2001; ForeWord Magazine Award finalist for best fiction, 2002, for My Mother's Lovers; Mayor's Arts Award, Moscow Arts Comission, 2004; research fellowship, Idaho Humanities Council, 2005; four Pushcart Prize nominations, for essays and stories.

WRITINGS:

Writing Guidelines, 1991.

Sinning in Italy (poetry), Limberlost Press, 1999.

My Mother's Lovers (novel), University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 2002.

The Art of Absence: Stories, Lost Horse Press (Sandpoint, ID), 2004.

Contributor of essays, fiction, and poetry to periodicals, including Alaska Quarterly, Short Story, College English, Gettysburg Review, Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and Xavier Review. Advisory editor, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 1996—.

SIDELIGHTS:

In Joy Passanante's first novel, My Mother's Lovers, she tells the tale of a young girl growing up the child of unconventional parents who came of age in the radical Sixties. In her early teens, Lake Rose Davis is finding it harder and harder to cope with her parents—and especially with her mother, the exhibitionist painter Mimi. "In a series of discomfiting revelations," wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Lake discovers herself by learning the truth about Mimi, whose exhibitionism hides as much as it reveals." Further revelations come after Lake develops a serious illness and travels to her grandparents' home in St. Louis, Missouri, to recuperate. "As Lake recuperates, then stays on after a tragic accident," declared a contributor to Kirkus Reviews, "she learns more about her family, Mimi, and the binding ties of love as she chases her own dreams."

Each story in Passanante's collection The Art of Absence: Stories centers on the theme of the loss of love and the failure of relationships. Reviewers celebrated the author's command of language and her restrained approach to these volatile subjects. "Passanante," declared Nathan Leslie in Pedestal Magazine, "tends to write in two directions at once—while the subject matter of her stories gravitates towards emotional extremes, the prose is discreet, carefully controlled, burnished." "Passanante's vision is bleak, her eye trained on loss," Danielle LaVaque-Manty stated in her NewPages.com review of the volume. "These stories don't lead to despair, however, but rather to recognition of the ways in which our lives remain rich despite the absences that shape them."