Joy has devoted her career to developing and publishing work that speaks to the intersection of cultures, exploring where fault lines appear, and where we connect. From idea to concept to writing to publication, she has mentored writers at every level of the development process nurturing their unique voices. Stocke shepherds books from concept to editorial to print, design, and publication through Tree of Life Books, whose team has been working together for more than 20 years..
Stocke graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a BS in Journalism and a minor in French and Food Science.
In 1989, she met Denise Larrabee, Linda Wright, and Frances Metzman in a creative writing class at Community College of Philadelphia. The four women joined forces to form the Meridian Writers Collective named for the legendary independent bookstore where the group met to critique each other’s work. The Collective partnered with the Pennsylvania Center for the Book to sponsor the Meridian Writers’ Collective Short Fiction award. The collective hosted a monthly reading series pairing up-and-coming writers with established Philadelphia authors such as: Lorene Cary, John Timpane, JC Todd, Eleanor Wilner, Diane McKinney Whetstone. For a decade, she wrote Op-Ed pieces and book reviews for then Op-Ed editor, John Timpane, at the Philadelphia Inquirer focusing on Turkey, its politics, literature, and culture.
In 2004, Stocke became editor-in-chief of the Bucks County Writer (BCW), the literary magazine published by The Writers Room, a literary center in Bucks County, PA. BCW’s honorary board members included Herman Silverman, Founder of the James A. Michener Art Museum; , Edward Albee, playwright;, Lorene Cary, author; Christopher Durang, playwright; Stephen Sondheim, playwright, librettist, lyricist; and William Wright, author. Stocke and a team of writers and designers including Tree of Life’s Tim Ogline, Raquel Pidal, and Jill Sherer Murray launched one of the first literary magazines to transition to online publishing. They and a team of writers co-founded the online magazine Wild River Review. Stocke, and writer Kim Nagy founded Wild River Consulting and Publishing, LLC., & Wild River Books, becaming expert in all steps of the publishing process.
Stocke has written articles, op-eds, interviews, and has published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The San Diego Tribune, The Turkish Daily News, among others, and has more than 20 years of managerial experience with an emphasis on team-building. She has also consulted for the Humanities Council at Princeton University. Stocke has written about and lectured widely on her travels in Greece and Turkey. Her travel memoir, Anatolian Days and Nights: A Love Affair with Turkey, Land of Dervishes, Goddesses, and Saints, is co-authored with Angie Brenner, (Wild River Books 2012). Stocke also contributed the first essay on Turkish American Food to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (OUP, 2012), and again with Angie Brenner is the co-author of Tree of Life: Turkish Home Cooking (Quarto, 2017). In 2023 she edited the first comprehensive cookbook on Aruban Cuisine, Aruba’s Papiamento Cuisine: New Caribbean Cooking Celebrating its Creole Roots and Multicultural Flavors, by celebrated chef and restaurant pioneer, Aliza Green.
She is also an experienced recipe-writer, and tester, and has invented hundreds of recipes focusing on the ingredients of the Eastern Mediterranean and Mexico. In February 2020, with Shelley Wiseman and Kendra Thatcher of The Farm Cooking School in Titusville, New Jersey, she hosted two weeks of cooking classes in Cabo Pulmo on a coral reef on the southern tip of the Baja Sur, Mexico, Peninsula where she focused on the cross-pollination of ingredients as they relate to trade routes. Stocke is writing a book about the history of the southern Baja Peninsula. In 2023, she was inducted into the Philadelphia Chapter of Les Dames D’Escoffier, where she seeks to mentor women building their careers in the world of food and culture.
Tree of Life Tree of Joy and Tree of Life Books are an outgrowth of all of the above. Its team of writers and designers have grown and worked together through the age of print into the digital world and continue to evolve as the field changes.
While we are diverse group in all ways, our love for language often combined with image, video, music, enlightens, transforms, provokes, delights, and is the driving force behind our work.
You can contact her at: stockey@mac.com or JoyStocke@gmail.com