Sean Arthur Joyce's method in Words from the Dead is to analyze the Covid Age through great works of literature, poetry and history, using them as a lens through which to focus critical thinking. Even popular culture such as songs and movies - to the extent it relies on the great themes of art - can be a source of deep meaning. History itself began from the storytelling impulse, the basis of narrative. Essays are simply a more direct way of critically addressing the stories we tell each other in a culture. And it's clear that now more than ever, the narratives we hear in the media are in need of challenging. Joyce is following in the tradition of great essayists such as Montaigne, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. These writers didn't see themselves as experts but as insatiably curious intellects using the Socratic method to explore anything that interested them. Words From the Dead helps the reader cultivate a facility for pattern recognition based on the precedents of history and literature. 'That is my hope for this book, to bring consolation, critical thinking and clarity to readers devastated in their various ways by the Covid Age,' says Joyce. Words From the Dead draws on an wide reading list of nearly 50 books, from the 5th century BC to the present. From the ancient Taoist sages Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, through the writers of classic literature, to more recent critical commentators such as Karl Popper, Arnold Toynbee, John Ralston Saul and Michael Rectenwald, Words From the Dead digs deep for its perspectives. Joyce's 30-year career as a freelance journalist and author of 10 books provides a solid research foundation for the book, with over 600 reference footnotes.

Sean Arthur Joyce, better known in the Kootenays as Art Joyce, has published two books of regional history and in 2014 published Laying the Children's Ghosts to Rest: Canada's Home Children in the West (Hagios Press) on the little-known historical phenomenon of the 100,000 poor children exported from the UK to work as indentured child labourers on Canadian farms.

Joyce's poems and essays on poetics have appeared in Canadian, American and British literary journals. In 2016 his poetics thesis, A New Romanticism for the 21st Century, appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Canadian Poetry from the University of Western Ontario. His poetry has appeared in several anthologies, both Canadian and international, most recently in the Corbel Stone Press Contemporary Poetry series (UK 2017), Nanaimo Public Library anthology and Fire & Sky, a fundraiser for victims of the Ft. McMurray, Alberta firestorm of 2016.

New Orphic Publishers of Nelson, BC Canada has published three collections of his poetry, The Charlatans of Paradise, Star Seeds, and The Price of Transcendence, the latter edited by renowned Canadian poet Tom Wayman, who calls it "a first class collection." bill bissett reviewed Charlatans with one word: "excellent."

In 2016 he produced his second poetry video, Dead Crow: Prologue, with music soundtrack composed by Noel Fudge and video production by Isaac Carter of ICandy Films. A live version of the performance toured the Kootenays in Fall 2016.

Joyce's first novel, Mountain Blues, is due out in May 2018 from NeWest Press.

Sean Arthur Joyce's profile page