Join us in the Bridwell Library Blue Room on SMU’s campus for a reading by Hughes Creative Writing Fellows in Poetry, L.A. Johnson and JD Debris. Featuring saxophonist Ste'fon Landers. Presented by SMU English. Reception and book signing to follow.

L. A. Johnson is the author of Lost Music (Milkweed Editions, 2027) and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis (Graywolf Press, 2026). She holds a PhD from University of Southern California, where through academic years 2023-25 she was a Mellon Humanities and University of the Future Postdoctoral Fellow. The winner of the 2022 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the 2022 Greensboro Review Poetry Prize, and the 2021 Arts & Letters Rumi Poetry Prize, her poems appear in The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is currently a Hughes Fellow at Southern Methodist University.

JD Debris is a poet, fiction writer, and musician from Salem, Massachusetts, known for his unique live performances incorporating poetry, live music, and storytelling. His debut book,The Scorpion's Question Mark, was selected by Cornelius Eady for the 2022 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. He has been a Goldwater Fellow at New York University, a Luso-American Fellow at DISQUIET, and a Teaching Artist Fellow at Mass Poetry. His work has recently appeared in Poems.com's Poem-a-Day and The Kenyon Review, and has been commended by Narrative's 30 Below 30 List and Ploughshares' Emerging Writers Prize. He currently serves as a Hughes Fellow in Creative Writing at Southern Methodist University.