Lynn Marie Houston

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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. In 2018, she was 1 of 7 writers honored with a state fellowship from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. After well over a decade as a college English professor, she now works as a technical writer in avionics.

The Clever Dream of Man (Aldrich Press 2015), her first collection of poetry, 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. It was also named as a top debut title to read for 2015 by the LitHub. Her 3rd book, The Mauled Keeper (Main Street Rag, 2017), was a runner-up in the New England Book Festival and is a finalist for the Montaigne Medal awarded by the Eric Hoffer awards committee.

Her poems and essays have appeared in journals such as O-Dark-Thirty, Consequence, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Word Riot, Gravel, Squalorly, and many others. As a literary citizen, she has served in various roles: founding editor and editor in chief of Five Oaks Press, member of the National Book Critics Circle, poetry editor for the Noctua Review (2016-2017), and judge for the annual writing competition sponsored by the Connecticut Press Club (2018).

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.