William Joyce

William Joyce is a children’s book author from Shreveport. He came to the attention of literary buffs when his animated short film “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” was the winner of the Academy Award in 2012. Joyce was born in 1957 Shreveport to a family of friendly Southern screwballs. He was born to an eclectic family of actors, artists, geologists, bongo players, opera singers, and photographers and legend had it that he came out of the womb with a pen in his hand. Right from when he was a preschooler, he showed an interest in creative pursuits as he voraciously consumed Maurice Sendak’s works. By the time he was in elementary school, he was making his own drawings. As a fourth-grader, he wrote his first piece a graphic picture book titled “Billy’s Booger” that he entered in a school contest. It told the story of a boy that was struck by a meteorite, which gave him super mathematical powers. His classmates loved the story and it earned him a visit to the headmaster’s office where he was feted. As a high schooler, Joyce worked for the Shreveport’s Byrd High School paper drawing cartoons. Through it all, his parents were very supportive of his artistic endeavors and enrolled him in art classes and ultimately at Southern Methodist University to study art.