Accolades
Alumni
The event, free and open to the public, will be in the Governor’s Room of the Overman Student Center. It is sponsored by the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series and the Student Fee Council.
University Professor Laura Washburn said they have inspired her.
“They are making a lot of difference in the world,” she said. “They're each active in publishing other writers, in teaching, and they deserve a lot of recognition for their own work. When Josh was a student, I saw him as someone who ate, slept, and breathed poetry. Allison is a dynamo, having started a literary magazine, a nonprofit press, serving on several magazine staffs, running a reading series, and teaching multiple classes. She never stops. And they both have young families. I'm inspired by them both.”
Davis and Blevins co-authored “Chorus for the Kill,” a collaborative chapbook forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press.
After graduating from Pittsburg State, Davis earned an MFA from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, an MFA from the University of Mississippi, and is now a doctoral candidate in literature at Ohio University.
A former John and Renee Grisham fellow, he teaches poetry, fiction, and multi-genre workshops, and high school English near Tampa, Florida. Recent poems have appeared in The New Southern Fugitives, Tinfish, and Apalachee Review.
After graduating from Pittsburg State, Blevins earned her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte. She is the author of the poetry collection “Slowly/Suddenly” (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021) and the nonfiction collection “Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir” (BlazeVox, 2022).
Her hybrid collection “Cataloguing Pain” (YesYes Books, 2022), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of "Susurration” (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), “Letters to Joan” (Lithic Press, 2019), and “A Season for Speaking” (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series.
Blevins serves as the director of Small Harbor Publishing and as the executive editor at The Museum of Americana. She lives in Missouri with her spouse and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.
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