Event Type : Poetry Reading

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry series at the Wild Detectives! Curated by poet Logen Cure, the show is the second Wednesday of every month. Meet us in the backyard at 7:30pm on Wednesday September 9th for a live reading from one featured writer, with a brief open mic to follow. This month, we are proud to present writer Princess McDowell!

Princess McDowell (she/they) is a multi-faceted writer and editor from Dallas, Texas. Their career spans over 20 years in journalism, performance poetry, and copywriting to both tell their unique story as a black queer storyteller and craft stories for global and local organizations.

She is a two-time Pink Door literary fellow, a national and international touring poet, and as a teaching artist has run workshops and collaborated with youth literary groups across the country, producing a book of COVID-related writings with high school students in 2020.

Princess has been a part of Rebellious Magazine since its relaunch in 2016, delivering biting columns and graphic novel reviews in addition to co-hosting the Feminist Erotica podcast. As Special Projects Editor, Princess works behind the scenes to curate diverse voices for Rebellious’ news coverage.

“Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.”

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

First Rodeo is back! Join poets francine j. harris, Adam Clay, Karisma Price, and Greg Brownderville as they read new work.

First Rodeo is a seasonal poetry series hosted by Hannah Smith & L. A. Johnson and sponsored by SMU’s Project Poëtica.

About the poets:

francine j. harris is a 2025 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and author of three poetry collections. Her third collection, Here is the Sweet Hand, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is Professor of English at University of Houston and Consulting Faculty Editor at Gulf Coast.

Adam Clay is the author of five books of poetry, including Circle Back (Milkweed Editions, 2024). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Mid-American Review, A Public Space, Ninth Letter, TriQuarterly, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, Bennington Review, Black Warrior Review, Georgia Review, Boston Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He received a Literary Arts Fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission in 2018. For twenty years, he co-edited Typo Magazine, a journal of poetry and poetics. He is an Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University.

A native New Orleanian, Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet and screenwriter, she is the author of I’m Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023) which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick. Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere. Her honors include a 2026 Writing Freedom Fellowship from Haymarket Books and The Mellon Foundation, a 2025 Whiting Award in Poetry, a Cave Canem Fellowship, and the 2023 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University.

Greg Brownderville is the author of three books of poetry, the editor-in-chief of Southwest Review, and a professor of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is also the creator of an online narrative series called Fire Bones.

Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter