Lucien Darjeun Meadows was born and raised among lands sometimes called Virginia and West Virginia. An AWP Intro Journals Project winner, he has received nominations for Best New Poets and the Pushcart Prize. For his writing and his work in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, Lucien has received fellowships and awards from the Academy of American Poets, American Alliance of Museums, American Association of Geographers, Bread Loaf Conferences, Colorado Creative Industries, National Association for Interpretation, and University of Denver, where he completed his PhD in June 2023.
His dissertation, The Queer Ecology of Clouds in Nineteenth-Century British Poetics, brings together queer studies, ecology, literary studies, and philosophy to consider how C19 British writers invoke clouds in their poetic writing to move away from human subject-environmental object hierarchies and toward more respectful, inclusive subject-subject kinships — and what we can learn from them, today, in our period of increasing injustice, extinction, and climate crisis.
Lucien currently serves as Poetry Editor for The Hopper and Managing Editor for Legacy Magazine, having recently completed a five-year term with Denver Quarterly. He is a Certified Interpretive Guide and Certified Interpretive Manager with the National Association for Interpretation (for whom he directed the 2019 National Conference in Denver), and he is often found with the northern Colorado trails as a Volunteer Ranger Assistant and an ultramarathon runner.
His work has been widely published, including features in Appalachian Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ecotone, Narrative, New England Review, Pleiades, Poetry Daily, and West Branch. He has contributed creative and critical work to several anthologies, including A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia (University of Georgia Press) and LGBTIQ Poets on the Art of Teaching (Sibling Rivalry Press), a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
His debut poetry collection, In the Hands of the River, is now out from Hub City Press!
Lucien Darjeun Meadows 