She was made a Distinguished Companion of New Zealand Order of Merit for services to children's literature at the 2005 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
She has also worked as a teacher of creative writing for children in more than 10 countries and won critical acclaim for her adult novels and short stories. She is internationally recognised for her contribution to children's literacy and has written more than 600 early readers, along with novels and poetry for children. Joy has contributed many stories, plays, and poems to New Zealand's School Journal, as far back as the 1960s and as recently as 2010. In 2004, she received the A W Reed Award for Contribution to New Zealand Literature at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She has been published so widely and to such acclaim that she received a Commemoration Medal in 1990, the OBE in 1992 for her services to children’s literature, the Margaret Mahy Award Lecture in 1993 and an honorary doctorate from Massey University in 1993. Cassia Joy Cowley, a fiction writer for children and adults, was born in Levin and educated at Palmerston North GHS and Pharmacy College.
