More about Laura Joyce Davis
Laura Joyce Davis writes to explore the triumph of the human spirit in a broken world.
A lecturer in podcasting at the Stanford Storytelling Project and former Fulbright scholar, Laura also won the Poets & Writers Exchange Award, earned Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices nominations for fiction, and was a finalist for WNYC’s podcast accelerator. In previous lives, she was a running coach, a capella singer, and scholarship athlete.
Podcasting
Shelter in Place was pandemic-born, an author’s way to chronicle and contend with a unique moment in history. Though a longtime fiction writer, Laura sensed that a daily story podcast would better keep pace with current events, force her to grow creatively, and enable livelier and more inclusive conversation. Over two and a half years and 200 scripted episodes, it turned out that Laura hadn’t just found a new vocation — she’d found her voice.
Laura’s first podcasting project, MisInformed, looked at US-Mexico immigration through real-life stories from across literal and political borders. The plan for Misinformed also included living in Mexico for a year, a series of interviews, and partnerships with Ethical Storytelling, the Mexico Department of Immigration, and four Mexican universities. Misinformed was a finalist for the WNYC podcast accelerator contest, and for a 2020 Fulbright scholarship.
Social justice work
Laura's writing has often intertwined with nonprofit work. She wrote for Micro Business Mentors, a nonprofit providing entrepreneurial loans and training in developing countries. As a Fulbright scholar to the Philippines in 2010, Laura spent a year working with sex trafficking survivors, whose courage in the face of corrosive injustice inspired her novel, which won the 2013 California Writers Exchange Award. You can read about her experience here and here.
Writing influences & awards
In college and grad school, Laura studied writing with Elmaz Abinader, Daniel Alarcón, Anthony Doerr, Yiyun Li, Victor LaValle, and Micheline Aharonian Marcom. Laura has earned a Kimmel-Harding Nelson residency, won two Ardella Mills prizes for fiction, and has been nominated for two Pushcart prizes, Best New American Voices, and Glimmer Train’s Honorable Mention for New Writers.
Personal background
Laura hails from Minneapolis but now calls Oakland home, where she lives with her husband Nate and three kids in their 914-square foot bungalow. When she's not writing or chasing children, she's running on the trails, biking in the Oakland hills, singing, or cooking something from Ad Hoc at Home.
… Laura’s interviews elsewhere …
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Mind of a Mentor
“Hot conversations for podcasters about podcasting — what podcasting advice should sound like. The show brings together the best podcasters and audio industry experts in the world every week.” Hosted by Marla Isackson, OSSA Collective CEO.
Laura, like Marla, focuses on empowering women and non-binary podcasters. They discuss amplifying underrepresented voices with education, trying to make money , and what goes into creating an award-winning podcast (August 2022).
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Jump Start Your Joy
Bay Area business coach Paula Jenkins was Inspired by the quote “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day,” and this lively show looks at the inspiration, intention, and action that lead to joy in your life, the world, and other people's lives.
We talk about finding joy in hard times, defining the meaning of home, and sheltering in place as parents (April 2022).
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2 Lives
"We all have two lives. The second begins the moment we realize we have only one." Stories of people who have faced darkness and how those moments transformed them. 2 Lives is hosted and produced by veteran journalist Laurel Morales.
As Laura says "2 Lives" and her show are kindred spirits. We talk about how our shows came about, why we keep producing them, and our "2 Lives" moments (January 2022).
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Pod Broads
Do you love podcasts and uplifting women’s voices? If so, then this podcast is for you: featuring interviews with different women in the podcast industry about how each of their lives and work intersect.” Hosted by podcast PR whiz Alexandra Cohl.
Laura shares her journey first as a writer and how she found her voice in podcasting, the impact motherhood had on creative work, and how she and her husband handled both the pandemic and making 100 daily episodes (May 2021).
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Future Hindsight
Future Hindsight is a weekly podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for everyday citizens. Host Mila Atmos believes that citizen participation is fundamental to a thriving democracy.
Laura and Mila discuss what they’ve learned from podcasting during the pandemic, and why aiming to be good neighbors is an important step to realizing the full potential of our society (April 2021).
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@Sea
@Sea with Justin McRoberts is a bi-monthly interview show with culture makers and shakers. Each installment, host Justin McRoberts talks with artists, creatives, policymakers, and theologians that are striving and pushing for humanity to reach new heights.
That’s what I find inspiring and formative in Laura Joyce Davis: she and her family took Covid as an opportunity to dive headlong into the unknown and see what they could make of the pieces they found there (February 2021).
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Beyond 6 Seconds
First impressions can take only 6 seconds, but if you’re neurodivergent, those can be misleading. Host Carolyn Kiel talks with a range of inspiring people, who shatter misconceptions, break stigma and showcase the vibrance of neurodiversity.
How podcasting has helped us cope with challenges and isolation, inspired our creativity, and allowed us to make connections. Plus, how cappella singing impacts our podcasting (December 2020).
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Emerging Form
Emerging Form is a podcast about the creative process in which a journalist and bestselling author (Christie Aschwanden, Good to Go) and award-winning poet (Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer) discuss creative conundrums over wine.
Balancing parenting and work; changed family dynamics; about disappointments and silver linings; about how a daily practice has offered her surprising freedom, and how a bike ride March 16 changed her life (May 2020).
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Out There
“A podcast exploring big questions via intimate stories in the great outdoors.” Host Willow Belden started the show after a transforming solo trek on the Colorado Trail: a way to tell stories about how nature can help a person make sense of life.
The story explores the parallels between backpacking in the California wilderness and social distancing. We also chat about how producing a daily podcast is helping her ward off depression and find bright spots amidst the hardship (April 2020).
Laura Joyce Davis: selected writing credits
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“Slab City”
“My name could be Bonnie or Maggie or Sharon. The name’s not important, but the bike is. It’s a Harley, the kind you always dreamed of getting if you could have sold the house that went to your ex-wife . . .”
Fiction; A Capella Zoo, 2009
Ardella Mills Prize for Graduate Fiction, 2006; Pushcart Prize nominee, 2009 -
“Touched”
“I like art that reaches down my throat and squeezes my breath with commanding fingers. I like writing that makes my chest pound, my face flush. I like being nervous about what people will see when they read my work.”
Creative nonfiction; Cricket Online Review, Spring 2006
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"Ruined for the better"
“Manila rattles and roars with the energy of 20 million people hustling to get by, stray dogs and roosters roaming the streets, jam-packed jeepneys careening through traffic, acres of tin-roof-and-cinderblock slums and the smell of grilled intestines competing with diesel fumes in the dense, sweaty air.”
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“Chased by the Muse”
“We lay beside strangers, 150 light bulbs radiating heat. The power flickers and the air conditioner stutters to a stop, like the building exhaling its final breath.”
Creative nonfiction; Hobart Magazine, summer 2015
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“Meet the Mom who Stopped Joseph Kony”
“How Shannon Sedgwick Davis helped dismantle the Ugandan warlord's reign of terror.” A personal profile of a courageous woman with a giant impact.
Non-fiction; Christianity Today, February 2015
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“The Wayzata Way”
"When a goal takes you away from the present moment and creates anxiety, it becomes an albatross around your neck," Emmans says. "We're always telling them not to overthink racing.”
Nonfiction interview; Runners’ World, December 2014
Laura Joyce Davis: selected voice & singing work
The trailer was for season three, beginning fall of 2021, for Shelter in Place. The reading is a short excerpt from Laura’s prizewinning story. Laura’s song, “Breathless” was included in the 2002 “Best of College A Capella” album.
