Join us in celebrating the recent release of Amanda Johnston’s debut poetry collection, Another Way to Say Enter. Amanda will be joined by Lisa L. Moore.
In Amanda Johnston’s debut collection, Another Way to Say Enter, readers are offered glimpses of scenes as if peering through windows and doors. Bright and sharp, precise in their Imagism, Johnston’s poems distill moments to their essence, challenge notions of what it means to fully examine a life day by day, room by room. These poems are both visceral and spiritual, reminding the reader that entry, departure, and the inevitable return is a journey that must be felt, not just imagined. —Teneice Durrant, Argus House Press
Amanda Johnston earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter (Argus House Press). Her poetry and interviews have appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them Callaloo, Poetry, Kinfolks Quarterly, Muzzle, Pluck! and the anthologies Small Batch, di-ver-city and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. The recipient of multiple Artist Enrichment grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Christina Sergeyevna Award from the Austin International Poetry Festival, she is a member of the Affrilachian Poets and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Johnston is a Stonecoast MFA faculty member, a cofounder of Black Poets Speak Out, and founding executive director of Torch Literary Arts.
Lisa L. Moore is an Alberta-born writer who has lived in Austin, Texas for almost thirty years. She’s the author of the chapbook 24 Hours of Men (Dancing Girl, 2018). Her poems have appeared recently in Nimrod International Journal, The Fourth River, and Borderlands Texas Poetry Review. Her poetry and critical writing have been recognized with the Art/Lines Juried Poetry Prize and the Lambda Literary Foundation Book Award. The author or editor of five books of literary criticism, she teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.