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Porchlight: A Journal of Southern Literature

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A collection of 131 posts

Essay by Sara Shea

Essay by Sara Shea

Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as Student Associate Editor for The Kenyon Review. She's pursued graduate studies through the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville and at Western Carolina University, where she studied with Ron Rash. Her work has appeared in

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 fifth 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 Samantha Vogt

Fiction by Samantha Vogt

Samantha Vogt is a writer from Louisiana. She has a BA in Humanities from Louisiana State University and an MA in English from the University of New Orleans, which shifted the focus of her stories onto the weird and forgotten corners of the South. When not writing, she can be

Fiction by Moxie

Fiction by Moxie

Moxie is a writer, outdoor educator, and mother living in Dallas, Texas. Raised in Merritt Island, Florida, she attended a women’s university in Virginia. Beyond writing, she is passionate about introducing girls of all ages to the outdoors. Father Figure I say, “Yeah, it must be kinda hard to

Poetry by Morgan DePue

Poetry by Morgan DePue

Morgan DePue is a neurodivergent poet with deep West Virginian roots. She resides in the high country of North Carolina with her partner and teaches college writing at Appalachian State University. Her work is published in anthologies and journals including As the Crow Flies, Had I A Dove: Appalachian Poets

Fiction by Michael Braswell

Fiction by Michael Braswell

Michael Braswell is a retired professor from East Tennessee State University and former prison psychologist. He has published books on social justice issues as well as four short story collections. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His most recent books include The Light that Remains: Stories of War

Fiction by M. Elaine Wilkins

Fiction by M. Elaine Wilkins

M. Elaine Wilkins holds an Ed.D. in Education and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Her work has appeared in 101 Words. She writes Southern family sagas and personal essays. The Blues Is Hard on Your Feet I remember. When Daddy took me to

Fiction by Kai Cooley

Fiction by Kai Cooley

Kai Cooley lives, writes, gardens, and walks dogs in the Appalachian foothills. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Dayton Daily News, Nerve Cowboy, Skipjack Review, and Still: the Journal. Cloud Racing For a few hours one spring afternoon, I was a movie star in the passenger seat

Poetry by KB Ballentine

Poetry by KB Ballentine

KB Ballentine, winner of Poetry Society of Tennessee’s 2025 Best of the Fest and Writer’s Digest November 2024 PAD Chapbook Challenge, has nine collections of poetry, the most recent All the Way Through (Shelia-Na-Gig 2024). Her work also appears in numerous anthologies, including: Women Speak: Volume

Poetry by Dan Hawkins

Poetry by Dan Hawkins

Dan Hawkins is a poet and librarian from North Carolina living in South Carolina. Charleston has grown on him, though he still questions the wisdom of building a city on a swamp. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Constellations, Tipton Poetry Review, and 45th Parallel among other places.

Poetry by Garrett Bruner

Poetry by Garrett Bruner

Garrett R. Bruner is an archivist, archaeologist, and poet. The past decade, he has processed ancient Greek script related collections and serves as a site archivist for two Roman villas near Pompeii, Italy. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Offcourse, Wayfarer Magazine, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Wayne Literary Review,

Fiction by Charles Fink

Fiction by Charles Fink

Charles K. Fink has a Ph.D. in philosophy and taught as a professor at Miami-Dade College for thirty years. His family has deep Southern and Western roots—sharecroppers in Louisianna, plantation owners in Georgia, Confederate soldiers in North Carolina, sheep ranchers in Texas. He lives in Florida with

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