Joel Worford

Joel Worford is a writer and musician from Richmond, Virginia, who holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His fiction has appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, TriQuarterly, Blackbird, Gulf Coast Journal and other journals. His short story "The Word" was named a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2023. His story "No Clubs" appeared in Best Small Fictions 2024 and in Hayden's Ferry Review (2024). He won the 2026 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, judged by Kaveh Akbar. His first book, The Trouble with Knowing Better, is forthcoming from Sarabande Books.