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 held writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Art Farm of Nebraska. In 2018, she was one of seven writers honored with a state fellowship from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. After over a decade as a college English professor, she left teaching to work as a technical support specialist.

Her 4th poetry book, The Mauled Keeper (Main Street Rag, 2017), was a runner-up of the Cathy Smith Bowers contest, a runner-up in the New England Book Festival, first runner-up for the Eric Hoffer poetry award, a finalist for the Montaigne Medal, and winner of the poetry category in the National Federation of Press Women’s nationwide literary competition.

Houston’s 2019 academic reference book, entitled Literary Geography: An Encyclopedia of Real and Imagined Settings (Greenwood, 2019; ISBN 9781440842542) has been well received by ecocritics, teachers of environmental literature, and other interdisciplinary, place-based educators. Kirkus Reviews has called it “meticulously compiled” and “a thought-provoking literary aid.” The Library Journal says the following:

High school and college students will find excellent examples of how to study the geographical components of literature, while book clubs will discover fresh approaches to old and new classics.

Her poems and essays have appeared in over 50 literary journals, such as Rattle, War, Literature, and the Arts, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ocean State Review, Word Riot, Gravel, Squalorly, and many others.

Her recent creative and scholarly 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.