John Andrews

author of "Colin Is Changing His Name"

February 6, 2017

John Andrews is the author of "Colin Is Changing His Name" (forthcoming in June 2017 from Sibling Rivalry Press) which was a finalist for the 2015 Moon City Poetry Prize. Currently, he lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he is a Ph.D. student in English and creative writing at Oklahoma State University and serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review.

His poems have appeared in Assaracus, Burnt District, Columbia Poetry Review, Redivider, Pembroke Magazine, and elsewhere. His poems have also been anthologized in "The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South" and "Aim for the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry."

John holds a B.A. in writing from the University of Central Arkansas and an M.F.A. from Texas State University where he was named a C.D. Marshall Creative Writing Fellow and served as managing editor for Front Porch Journal.

He has taught creative writing and composition at Northern Oklahoma College, Oklahoma State University, and Texas State University. Also, he has taught K-12 students with Arkansas Governor's School, Austin Bat Cave, and Upward Bound.

In this book, John Andrews pries loose all the bitterness of what it means to come of age as a gay man in the south and laces sweetness in the wounds whenever possible. These poems are an elegy to what is given up, "picket fence, doctor visits, / sitting next to each other / in church," and an ode to what is discovered, "the hymn of surviving." In crisp lines and haunting images, Andrews' voice rings true.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2017-honorees-b/john-andrews

Last Updated: 12 January 2022