Greensboro College Professor Publishes His First Full-Length Book of Poetry

GREENSBORO, N.C. – L. Wayne Johns, professor of English at Greensboro College, has published “Antipsalm,” his first full-length book of poetry.

“Antipsalm” (Unicorn Press) is “spooky, devastating, and ultimately tragic,” reviewer and author Cate Marvin writes. “(It) is as real a love story as you’re going to find. … I am so haunted by the beauty of these poems, my hair stands on end: ‘Antipsalm’ pulls the ghosts from out the walls.”

“I’m not sure if Wayne Johns is a master of or a slave to the elegiac mode,” reviewer and author Jericho Brown writes. “I do know that the poems in ‘Antipsalm’ are religiously devoted to their search for proof that romantic love amounts to more than longing and that death isn’t the only possible end to such longing. … What a brilliantly well-crafted and heartbreaking debut!”

Johns previously has published two chapbooks, or shorter books of poetry: “The Exclusion Zone,” winner of the Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize, and “An Invisible Veil Between Us,” winner of the Frank O’ Hara Chapbook Award. His poems have appeared in New England Review, Ploughshares, Image, Meridian, Prairie Schooner, and Best New Poets, among other publications.

A Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow in fiction, Johns has had short stories included in “Gaslight: Lambda Fellows Anthology” and “Every True Pleasure: LGBTQ Voices of North Carolina” (UNC Press, 2019). He currently serves as a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal.

Johns holds a B.A. from St. Andrews Presbyterian College, an M.F.A. from Georgia State University, and a Ph.D. from Florida State University. He joined the faculty in 2007 and also advises the college’s award-winning student newspaper, The Collegian, and literary journal, The Lyre.

Greensboro College provides a liberal arts education grounded in the traditions of the United Methodist Church and fosters the intellectual, social, and, spiritual development of all students while supporting their individual needs.

Founded in 1838 and located in downtown Greensboro, the college enrolls about 1,000 students from 29 states and territories, the District of Columbia, and seven foreign countries in its undergraduate liberal-arts program and six master’s degree programs. In addition to rigorous academics and a well-supported Honors program, the school features a 17-sport NCAA Division III athletic program and dozens of service and recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.greensboro.edu.

Think critically. Act justly. Live faithfully.

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Media Contact:
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