Suspense, Mystery, Horror and Thriller Fiction - Suspense Magazine

Sueur, Sandra Cisneros, Naomi Shihab
Nye, and Margery Latimer.
Committed to broadening the reach
of higher education to communities
in need, she has offered free courses to
at-risk teenagers, victims of domestic
violence, and survivors of sexual assault,
and for several years she ran the biannual
Creative Writing/Creative Teaching
conference for Indiana high school and
middle school teachers.
Named one of 2009’s Best New
Latino Authors by LatinoStories.com,
Joy has a debut novel, “Hell or High
Water,” released by St. Martins/Thomas
Dunne in July 2012. Set in post-Katrina
New Orleans, it features a young
Cuban American reporter tracking the
registered sex offenders who disappeared
during the hurricane evacuation.
Joy’s second memoir, “Island of
Bones,” a collection of creative nonfiction and personal essays, will appear in September 2012 from the University of Nebraska
Press, along with a new paperback edition of “The Truth Book,” introduced by Dorothy Allison.
In “Hell or High Water,” Nola Céspedes, an ambitious young reporter at the Times-Picayune, catches a break: an assignment
to write her first, full-length investigative feature. It’s a far cry from the club openings and plantation tours she usually covers
and could become a story that will send ripples through New Orleans in the two years since Hurricane Katrina. The piece is
about sex offenders who have fallen off the grid since the city was evacuated.
While Nola speaks with survivors, offenders (some still on the registry, others not), and experts, she also becomes fixated
on the search for a missing tourist in New Orleans. As Nola’s work leads her into darker corners of the city, she has to hide
her work from her friends, feels her carefully constructed identity is threatened, and must ultimately revisit her painful past.
Vividly rendered in razor-sharp prose and with a knockout twist, “Hell or High Water” brings New Orleans to life in a
riveting journey of trust betrayed and the courageous struggle toward recovery.
Castro is finishing a collection of short stories, “How Winter Began,” and working on a second novel. She lives with her
husband in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Suspense Magazine is honored to have her in this month’s edition. We hope you enjoy getting to know her as much as we
did.
Suspense Magazine (S. MAG.): From the beginning, your life was set on fast-forward. What specifically brought you to
writing? How has it helped you persevere?
Joy Castro (JC): Thank you. What a kind and empathetic question. It’s felt that way to me sometimes, as though I’ve been
ricocheting through too many experiences way too fast.
And yes, writing has helped. I’ve always been a daydreamer, and my mother taught me to read when I was three. When I was very
small, I would make little books and illustrate them with animal characters. So I’m fortunate: the world of books, imagination,
reading, and writing were always there for me, a mainstay, a touchstone during difficult times.
Imagination isn’t frivolous. It allows us to envision alternatives.
SuspenseMagazine.com
“I saw that a teacher’s
kindness could make
a difference—that
teaching could be
a form of love. It’s
probably no accident
that I became a
professor.”
Of course, that’s why artists and writers are typically perceived as dangerous by totalitarian regimes, whether those regimes
operate at the level of the nation-state or at some other level. Because we are. We’re dangerous to illegitimate regimes, because
we can imagine other paths, and we have the means to express our vision. Imagination is a form of power that’s very difficult to
control.
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