Joyce Compton Brown was born into an agrarian German/Scots-Irish farm family in Iredell County, North Carolina. Appalachian State University confirmed her love for the mountains and Appalachian music, where she took classes in the Child Ballads and other subjects under the founder of the Appalachian Studies Association, Cratis Williams, and acquired her first banjo. Between bouts of paper grading at Gardner-Webb University, she welcomed chances to learn at Berea College and Hindman Settlement School writing workshops. Her early writing focuses on her Southern family roots and stories she heard as a child. Later writing, though based in specificity, strives for a sense of universality. She is the author of four previous books of poetry, most recently Hard-Packet Clay.