Steve Cushman earned his MA from Hollins University and MFA from UNC Greensboro. He has published four works of fiction, including the 2004 Novello Literary Award winning novel, Portisville, and most recently the novel, Hopscotch. His first full-length poetry collection, How Birds Fly, is the winner of the 2018 Lena Shull Book Award. After working as an X-ray Technologist for twenty years, he currently works in the IT Department at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital. Cushman lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his family.
Heart With Joy is a coming-of-age novel that reminds us that not everyone comes of age in the same way. Julian Hale, not quite sixteen, finds himself learning about adulthood, old age, death, his deepest passions, and most of all, what it means to love—family, friends, a girl named Tia, and himself. In his third book, Steve Cushman traces Julian’s development in straightforward, simple language and in so doing creates a remarkably vivid, attractive, credible, and memorable character who stays with the reader long after the book is closed.
–Kelly Cherry
