LSU Creative Writing

Tip your hats to Justin for getting his degree! 🧢 💯

Justin Howerton is a writer from Memphis, TN. Poetry is his first love, but lately he’s been trying to wrangle prose. His first feature-length script, Clearing the Trace, was a finalist in the 2024 Del Shores Foundation Writers Search. Recent poems can be found in Foglifter and Bicoastal Review. He’s won the William Jay Smith MFA Award for Poetry and the Ruth Elizabeth McClain Cassidy MFA Award for Screenwriting. He’s at work on a novel.

Let's give it up for the fiercely talented Brooke Stanish! 🌷

Brooke Stanish is a writer and MFA candidate at Louisiana State University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Bloodletter, Sans.PRESS, After Dinner Conversation, Josephine Quarterly, Either/Or, and elsewhere. Her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Shirley Jackson Award, and she was a recipient of the David Madden Award for Fiction as well.

Many congratulations, Brooke! 🎈 ❤️

Biggest congrats to another 2026 grad: the multi-hyphenate Xavier Hawkins! 🎺

Xavier Hawkins is a MFA candidate hailing from Hampton University, born in Memphis, TN. He is a poet with an affinity for flash fiction who focuses on relatability and capturing moments. He is a recipient of the United Negro College Fund’s Mellon-Mays Research Fellowship and studies the relationship between music and literature (particularly within August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle plays). As a trombonist and melody enthusiast, he enjoys making music and playing with words. A few of his poems can be found in the Hampton Renaissance Literary Journal, and much more remains to come!

Congrats, Xavier! 🐯