After a long career in journalism, Joyce Dehli began work on a collection of personal essays during a 2016-2017 fellow-in-residence at Harvard University’s Center for Ethics. Her recent work has been honored as a Notable Essay by Best American Essays 2023 and with the New Letters' 2022 Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction. She was a finalist for the 2019 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters, TriQuarterly, Hunger Mountain, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and the Chautauqua Literary Annual 2025: Saying it Plain: An American Patchwork.

She served on the Pulitzer Prize Board for nine years, the final year (2016-2017) as co-chair.

Joyce was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Louisville, Kentucky and Madison, Wisconsin, then for nine years served as VP of News at Lee Enterprises, a national newspaper company. Her work, alone or as part of a team, was recognized with more than 30 national and state journalism awards and honors. She was a 2002 Poynter Ethics Fellow and a roundtable panelist and guest teacher at The Poynter Institute and for other journalism organizations and in classrooms.

Joyce lives in Washington, D.C.