The 2014 Utah State Poetry Society Publication Award was made at the Spring Awards Festival for like water, like bread, a collection of poems by Joyce Webb Kohler. As the second of nine children growing up on a farm nestled among sandstone cliffs in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, she and her siblings were blessed with the freedom to roam and create their own fun, thus stimulating her imagination and nourishing her love of the outdoors. Joyce’s father was a great storyteller who told extemporaneous stories and read poetry to the children every night, fostering in them a love of language and literature.

Joyce’s poems have won awards in state and national contests and have a been published in The Ensign, Panorama, Encore, and Utah Sings, Volume VIII. She has studied at both Brigham Young University and the University of Utah. Joyce continues to research and write about topics that interest her.

After twenty-three years with the Department of Linguistics at BYU, Joyce is enjoying retirement in Midway, Utah, where she lives with her husband, and best friend, Dale. Busier than ever, she gardens, weaves, makes paper and books, reads voraciously, cuts and polishes the stones she finds on their jaunts, and writes because she can’t help it.