Lydia Yawn
Affiliated Faculty, School of Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies
Lydia Yawn is the author of a full-length poetry collection titled Ripping Velvet, which explores themes of religion, place, identity, and lineage within a Southern upbringing.
Yawn received the Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize in 2022 for their poem, “Primavera.” Their poetry is featured across multiple journals, including Muse Pie Press’s Shot Glass Journal, Jelly Bucket from the Blue Grass Writers Studio, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Ariadne Magazine, Edinboro University’s The Magazine, and a poem forthcoming in Hellbender Magazine.
Their teaching and research interests include poetry, memoir, composition, the Deep South, and the trauma of place. In addition to teaching within the First-Year Writing Program at Emerson College, Lydia is also an affiliated faculty member at Roxbury Community College, where they teach composition and rhetoric.
Courses
- Introduction to College Writing
- Research Writing
Creative Work
- Poems (“Death by Daylight Savings,” “My Grandmother, My First Funeral,” “Rita, Sandy, Irma, and Other Famous Female Storms”) Muse Pie Press’s Shot Glass Journal #45
- “Language of the Landscape”, Wingless Dreamer (Petal and Pines Contest finalist)
- “Playing Mermaids,” Jelly Bucket, Issue #14
- 2023, “Letter to My Niece, in Mount Vernon, Georgia,” The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
- 2021, “Sweeter than a Vidalia Onion,” The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
- 2020, Poems (“194,” “Comfort Food,” “Jane Doe,” “Rebirth,” “2006”); book review (“The Societal Wall”), Odradek Literary Arts Magazine
- 2020, Poems (“Plus-Sized,” “Letters I Never Sent”), Edinboro University’s The Magazine, Issue 5
- 2019, “Half a Tank and a Dream: An Ode to Junior Year”; creative nonfiction (“Sanctuary”), Odradek Literary Arts Magazine