Camden Joy

On November 8, 2013, Joy appeared as the President's Keynote Speaker at the 55th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A roundtable on Joy's work was held the next day, entitled "Ode to Joy: The Career of Camden Joy." Participants included Samuel Cohen, Trinie Dalton, Ben Bush, David N. Meyer, and Adam Wilson. Each spoke to the value of Joy's (by now) largely-forgotten works. Earlier the same week, a panel discussion entitled "Majesty of Impulse: On the Great Lost Works of Camden Joy" occurred at Housing Works Bookstore in New York. Justin Taylor joined the discussion along with many of the Milwaukee participants, each explaining how they first discovered Joy's works. ==Reissues==

On July 14, 2015, Verse Chorus Press of Portland, Oregon, brought "Lost Joy" back into print. Featuring an introduction by Jonathan Lethem, a foreword by Dennis Cooper, and blurbs from Dave Eggers and Ira Glass, with a new cover designed by Mark Lerner at Rag & Bone Shop. ==Recordings==

On October 28, 2013, Camden Joy appeared as a live guest on the Airborne Event radio show on WFMU. He spoke with host Dan Bodah and performed several songs in advance of his Housing Works and MLA retrospectives. The recordings of the session are available in the WFMU archives and at the Free Music Archive On October 1, 2015, Camden Joy released a dozen original songs called "Hasta La Bye Bye." Joy recorded these songs with his friends under the name The Oswalds, reviving a band that had not played together since the late eighties. Critic John Burdick called it, "noisy, skittish, comic and profoundly imaginative." Between January 1, 2020, and March 4, 2022, Camden Joy released forty-eight songs. He wrote and produced all. The first batch "Updated Just Now" was released on New Year’s Day, 2020. The Addison Independent said, “[it] evokes a sort of revolution-inspired passion with an overlay of more experimental indie-rock. Think Bob Dylan meets Pavement.” The songs elsewhere earned praise for their “poignant lyrics and powerful imagery.” The second batch “American Love” was released on the Fourth of July, 2020. The third and fourth batches “rerouting…” and “roaming on” were released on the Fourth of March, 2022. A cultural critic in the weekly "Seven Days" described “roaming on” as “a record that plays out like a jumbled slice-of-life document, full of surprise and charm." Joy has been licensed to perform in Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace and frequently busks there. == Souled American ==

In 2023, Camden Joy became involved with Souled American as their manager. In the spring of 2025, he published a book about their debut Fe (Souled American album) entitled "35 Days of Fe." ==Publications==

• • • • • • • • • • • Joy, Camden (2025) 35 Days of Fe. Seaside, CA: C. Joy. == References ==