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Porchlight: A Journal of Southern Literature

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A collection of 119 posts

Poetry by Emily Cosper

Poetry by Emily Cosper

Emily Cosper lives and writes in New Orleans, her home for the past 33 years. She recently retired after a long career at Delgado Community College, where she served as both a Professor of English and an academic dean. Originally from Texas and Colorado, she hopes someday to divide her

Fiction by Hallie Johnston

Fiction by Hallie Johnston

Hallie Johnston is a writer from the South. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Miami. Her work has appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, Saw Palm, The Boiler, The Louisville Review, and The Citron Review, among others. Kindergarten Their class is a windowless room in

Fiction by Howard Marsee

Fiction by Howard Marsee

Howard Marsee is a graduate of the University of Florida Law School where he was a law review editor and wrote news copy for his college radio station. He is now a Florida attorney, arbitrator, special magistrate, and mediator. He’s published three novels: Write Sorrow on the Bosom of

Fiction by Louis Bourgeois

Fiction by Louis Bourgeois

Although Louis Bourgeois has resided in Oxford, Mississippi for nearly three decades, he is a native South Louisianan whose French ancestors arrived a generation before the Acadian Exile. He is the Executive Director of the Mississippi non-profit arts coalition, VOX PRESS, and is the Director of the Mississippi Prison

Fiction by Steve Lambert

Fiction by Steve Lambert

Steve Lambert was born in Louisiana and grew up in Florida. His writing has appeared in Saw Palm, Tampa Review, Trampoline Poetry, Louisiana Literature, New World Writing, The Pinch, Broad River Review, Cortland Review, and many other places. In 2018 he won Emrys Journal’s Nancy Dew Taylor Poetry Prize

Novella by Steve Wick

Novella by Steve Wick

Porchlight is proud to continue the American tradition of serialization by offering a novella, Mr. Wilson by Steve Wick. Following is the fourth installment. Steve Wick is a journalist and writer living on eastern Long Island. His stories about the last farm labor camp in the region ran as a

Poetry by Susanna Schantz

Poetry by Susanna Schantz

Susanna Schantz is the recipient of the 2026 Juniper Literary Prize for her debut collection Sign Broken, Message Inside (University of Massachusetts Press, 2027). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Common, dadakuku, Abridged Magazine, PHIL LIT, coastlines review: a journal of docupoetics, La Piccioletta Barca, Sein und

Poetry by M.E. Gibson

Poetry by M.E. Gibson

Porchlight Prize in Poetry, First Place M. E. Gibson, native of North Carolina, now lives in Maine after sojourns in Asia and Scotland and years of teaching in North Carolina. A former editor of Chicago Review, she has published poems and fiction in Carolina Quarterly, International Poetry Review, Southern Review,

Poetry by Jake Lawson

Poetry by Jake Lawson

Porchlight Prize in Poetry, Second Place Jake Lawson is from Mooresburg Tennessee, and he an adjunct English instructor at East Tennessee State University. He is a carpenter, scholar, and writer of poetry and fiction. As a proud member of the Johnson City Poets Collective, he helps co-host monthly mic

Poetry by Noel Poston

Poetry by Noel Poston

Porchlight Prize in Poetry, Third Place Noel Plennert Poston finds endless inspiration from living among the hills and hollows of Middle Tennessee. She belongs to two incredibly creative writing groups and collaborates with two poet friends. Her work has appeared in the Tulip Tree Review, Poetry Superhighway, The Walnut Branch,

Fiction by Damn Jones

Fiction by Damn Jones

Damn Jones writes voice-driven, lyrical literary fiction and numinous poetry shaped by grief, faith, violence, memory, and spiritual fracture. He is a proud member of the Thirty West Publishing House masthead and the author of two novellas, including Keel., longlisted for the 2026 Fugere Book Prize for Finely Crafted

Fiction by Deborah Wilbrink

Fiction by Deborah Wilbrink

Deborah Douglas Wilbrink lives between Asheville, North Carolina and Barcelona, where she participates in a worker's collective by performing folk music for neighborhood associations. Retiring from ghostwriting over 50 memoirs for the not-so-famous, in the last year her stories were published in Asymptote, Dead Mule School

Fiction by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Fiction by Kari Gunter-Seymour

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the author of three award winning poetry collections, including Dirt Songs, winner of the IPPY Bronze, NYC Big Book , and Feathered Quill Awards. She is the Executive Director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series, Women Speak, a finalist for the

Novella by Steve Wick

Novella by Steve Wick

Porchlight is proud to continue the American tradition of serialization by offering a novella, Mr. Wilson by Steve Wick. Following is the third installment. Steve Wick is a journalist and writer living on eastern Long Island. His stories about the last farm labor camp in the region ran as a

Essay by Julie Green

Essay by Julie Green

Julie Green is a retired museum curator, wife, mom, lifelong choral singer, and radical arts advocate. She is currently finishing a novel about an opera singer. Navigating the Quiet Descent, a hybrid book about her wife’s journey into Alzheimer’s will be published this fall by Kelsay Books. She

Fiction by Marlin Barton

Fiction by Marlin Barton

Marlin Barton is from the Black Belt region of Alabama. His most recent book is a novel, Children of Dust, which was a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He's published two earlier novels, The Cross Garden and A Broken Thing, and three collections of short

Poetry by Bill Brymer

Poetry by Bill Brymer

Bill Brymer is a writer and photographer from Louisville, Kentucky. A Pushcart-nominated poet, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Louisville Review, Salvation South, Prairie Schooner, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Tar River Poetry, Southwest Review, Poetry South, Yearling, and other publications. His book Neighborhood Watch is scheduled

Poetry by Dan Leach

Poetry by Dan Leach

Dan Leach has published poems and stories in The Greensboro Review, The Southern Review, and The Sun. He is the 2023 recipient of Texas Review Press’s Southern Poetry Breakthrough Award, and his debut novel, Junah at the End of the World, won the South Carolina Novel Prize and was

Poetry by Kersea Calhoun

Poetry by Kersea Calhoun

Kersea Calhoun is a queer educator and mother. She holds a B.A. in English from Colorado Mesa University and an M.A. from Arizona State University. Her work has been featured in the CMU Literary Review and Velvet Grey, and is forthcoming in Beyond Queer Magazine, Wailing & Gnashing,

Poetry by Christopher Adkins

Poetry by Christopher Adkins

Christopher David Adkins, Ph.D. holds an AS from Virginia Western Community College, a BA with honors from Eckerd College in American Studies, a Master’s in American Studies from the University of South Florida. He also holds a Doctorate in History from the University of South Florida, where he

Fiction by Dean Tuck

Fiction by Dean Tuck

Dean Marshall Tuck is a writer living in eastern North Carolina with his wife and daughters. His novel, Twinless Twin (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) was chosen by Jason Mott as the winner of AWP’s 2024 James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel. His fiction was selected for this

Fiction by Tracy Barrett & Alison Bertolini

Fiction by Tracy Barrett & Alison Bertolini

Tracy Barrett and Alison Bertolini are friends and colleagues at North Dakota State University. A peripatetic historian of Texan descent, Tracy acquired her eye for the absurd at the knee of her grandfather, a repository for generations of clan lore. She currently resides in North Dakota with her family and

Novella by Steve Wick

Novella by Steve Wick

Porchlight is proud to continue the American tradition of serialization by offering a novella, Mr. Wilson by Steve Wick. Following is the second installment. Steve Wick is a journalist and writer living on eastern Long Island. His stories about the last farm labor camp in the region ran as a

Fiction by Ken Teutsch

Fiction by Ken Teutsch

Ken Teutsch is a writer, performer, and filmmaker living in central Arkansas. His stories have appeared in anthologies and in such diverse publications as Mystery Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and Cowboy Jamboree. He also records music in the guise of perennially failed country music “star,” Rudy Terwilliger. Snakebit What’s

Poetry by Gene Hyde

Poetry by Gene Hyde

Gene Hyde's eastern North Carolina roots go back more than ten generations. He fell in love with the North Carolina mountains five decades ago and has lived in the Appalachians most of his adult life. In 2024 he retired after a career as an Appalachian archivist and academic