Lynn Houston

Lynn Marie Houston holds a Ph.D. in English from Arizona State University and an MFA from Southern Connecticut State University. A Fulbright scholar (Switzerland 1994-1998), she has also held writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Art Farm. Her first collection of poetry, The Clever Dream of Man (Aldrich Press 2015), won the 2016 Connecticut Press Club prize for creative work and went on to take 2nd place in the nationwide competition sponsored by the National Federation of Press Women. Her recent work focuses on the legacy of her father’s service in Vietnam and the challenges veterans’ face in reintegrating into civilian life after combat. Unguarded, her collection of poem-letters to a deployed soldier, was the winner of The Heartland Review Press inaugural chapbook contest in 2017. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals such as O-Dark-Thirty, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Word Riot, Gravel, Squalorly, and many others. She is the founding editor of Five Oaks Press and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. For the 2016-2017 academic year, she served as poetry editor for the Noctua Review.