About
Bryana Joy is a poet, watercolor illustrator, and paper miniaturist based in Southeastern Pennsylvania. She is the author of "Summer of the Oystercatchers" (Fernwood Press, 2025), and her poetry has appeared in 60+ literary journals.
Between 2018 and 2022, she sent around 7,000 illustrated snail mail letters to subscribers in over 30 countries as part of a 48-month project called The Letters From the Sea Tower, and in 2024 she began making and mailing the Tales From the Mandalina Tree.
A traditional watercolor artist with a strong fondness for OOAK creations, her favorite form of studio work is intricate miniature 3D watercolor dioramas painted, cut, and built entirely by hand. She also writes and illustrates her own stories, poems, and microfiction with richly-detailed whimsical and surreal paintings.
As a third-culture kid who has inhabited eighteen different houses on three continents, her life and work have been shaped by many Atlantic crossings. Before making a home in the Lehigh Valley, she lived in Texas, Arkansas, and England, and her childhood and early teen years were spent in Türkiye where she developed her lifelong love both for the small sunny mandarin oranges known as mandalinas and for the planet-healing power of empathy.
Between 2018 and 2022, she sent around 7,000 illustrated snail mail letters to subscribers in over 30 countries as part of a 48-month project called The Letters From the Sea Tower, and in 2024 she began making and mailing the Tales From the Mandalina Tree.
A traditional watercolor artist with a strong fondness for OOAK creations, her favorite form of studio work is intricate miniature 3D watercolor dioramas painted, cut, and built entirely by hand. She also writes and illustrates her own stories, poems, and microfiction with richly-detailed whimsical and surreal paintings.
As a third-culture kid who has inhabited eighteen different houses on three continents, her life and work have been shaped by many Atlantic crossings. Before making a home in the Lehigh Valley, she lived in Texas, Arkansas, and England, and her childhood and early teen years were spent in Türkiye where she developed her lifelong love both for the small sunny mandarin oranges known as mandalinas and for the planet-healing power of empathy.