Online literary journal Joyland has relaunched as Joyland Publishing, an independent nonprofit publisher of fiction comprising both Joyland and Joyland Editions, a small press that will publish two novellas annually. Joyland editor-in-chief Michelle Lyn King will edit Joyland Edition titles alongside fellow Joyland editor Maddie Crum. Distributed by Asterism, the press will publish its first book, Information Age by Cora Lewis, on July 15, with plans to announce its second title in the spring.
King, who has been with Joyland since 2016, took over ownership of the magazine as editor-in-chief 2019 and oversaw its redesign in 2020. (She will now serve as the owner of Joyland Publishing.) In 2023, she decided it was time to shake things up yet again. In pondering Joyland's reinvention, King told PW, she wondered: "What could we do that might actually add something new to the current publishing landscape?" The prospect of acquiring and publishing novellas immediately intrigued her.
"I love novellas, and there just aren’t enough opportunities for writers to publish them," King said. "When Maddie [Crum] and I started soliciting writers back in spring 2024, we received a lot of emails saying some version of 'I was working on a novella but so-and-so told me not to bother because novellas don’t sell.' We’re really proud to be a small press dedicated to publishing novellas."
King noted that she and Crum will split editing duties down the middle. "We publish two books a year; I’m the lead editor of one title and Maddie is the lead editor of one title," she said. "We discuss our edits with one another and we really value one another’s feedback, but at the end of the day, it’s up to each of us to decide how we want to approach the editorial process."
Information Age, which was edited by Crum, is narrated by a journalist at an online news site reporting on technology, the economy, and politics in the late 2010s. Crum described Lewis's novella as "a playful, very funny book, and a reminder that no matter what is going on technologically, no matter how absurd or sheeny or seamless our ways of communicating become, we still have messy private lives; we still have bodies."
Joyland, which was founded in 2008, will also undergo changes as part of the relaunch. Walker Caplan and Devin Kawailani Barricklow have been named to succeed King as editor-in-chief (King will continue to edit for the magazine), and the magazine will no longer publish creative nonfiction, shifting its focus to short stories and stand-alone novel excerpts. Joyland has also installed a new editorial team, comprising editors Jo Barchi, Evgeniya Dame, Steven Duong, Rob Franklin, Kwame Opoku-Duku, Thomas Renjilian, Stephanie Wambugu, Emily Zhao, and Emily Zhou.
"With Joyland Publishing," King said, "we’re creating a unique space that bridges the immediacy of online literary journals and the timelessness of print publishing."
