Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 10/8/25, we welcomed Courtney LeBlanc back to Inner Moonlight!
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the four full-length collections, most recently, Her Dark Everything. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press, and of the Poetry Coven, a monthly generative workshop. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 9/10/25, we collaborated with SMU Project Poëtica to feature three poets, Aaron Smith, Denise Duhamel, and Luisa Muradyan, all of whom have books published by SMU Project Poëtica/Bridwell Press!
Aaron Smith is the author of five books of poetry with the University of Pittsburgh Press, most recently Stop Lying (2023). With the poet Maureen Seaton, he co-authored the book Beautiful People (2025). He is a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a two-time finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. His work has appeared in The Baffler, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. He is the cohost of the podcast Breaking Form and an associate professor of creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.
Denise Duhamel and the late Maureen Seaton co-authored six collections, the most recent of which is Tilt (Bridwell Press, 2025). Denise’s solo books include Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021), and Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). Blowout (Pittsburgh, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A recipient of NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, she is a distinguished university professor at Florida International University in Miami.
Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine and is the author of I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated (Bridwell Press, 2025) When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), and American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She holds a Ph.D. in Poetry from the University of Houston and won the 2017 Raz/ Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Additionally, Muradyan is a member of the Cheburashka Collective, a group of women and nonbinary writers from the former Soviet Union. Additional work can be found at Best American Poetry, the Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and Only Poems among others.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 8/13/25, we featured Austin poet Cindy Huyser!
Cindy Huyser is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Cartography (3: A Taos Press, 2025), the contest-winning chapbook, Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems (Blue Horse Press, 2014), co-author of the collaborative limited-edition chapbook XIII: Taylor Swift-Inspired Poems (Float Press, April 26, 2025), and co-editor of Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems (Dos Gatos Press, 2016). She holds an MFA from Pacific University. Learn more at https://cindyhuyser.wordpress.com.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 7/9/25, we caught the final stop of MA Nicholson's tour for a very memorable show!
Michelle (M.A.) Nicholson is a New Orleans poet, editor, educator, journalist, and arts-organizer with work featured in Best New Poets 2022 and Winter in America (Again anthologies, as well as Trampoline Poetry, Peauxdunque Review, Diode Poetry Journal, New Orleans Review, Tilted House Review, and elsewhere. An M.F.A. graduate from the University of New Orleans—where she served as Associate Poetry Editor for Bayou Magazine—M.A. was the recipient of the 2021 Andrea-Saunders Gereighty Academy of American Poets Award and was Kenyon Review’s 2024 Peter Taylor Fellow. Her debut poetry collection Around the Gate was selected for The Word Works' 2023 Hilary Tham Capital Collection prize.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all. We are proud to present this episode featuring our special event from 6/11/2025, the Pride Open Mic featuring work by favorite queer Dallas poets and other queer heroes! Poets in this episode:
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 5/14/25, we kicked off our 8th year with featured poet Robin Turner!
Robin Turner’s poems, prose poems, and flash fiction have appeared in numerous publications, among them Rattle, The Texas Observer, Rust & Moth, DMQ Review, One, and Bracken Magazine. Her work has been tucked inside little poetry houses in Pittsburgh, paired with photographs in a Deep Ellum art gallery, and transformed into tiny artist books for Lisa Huffaker’s White Rock Zine Machine. Her chapbooks are Elegy with Clouds & (Kelsay Books) and bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press). A longtime community teaching artist and sometime reader for Sugared Water, she lives near White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas.
We are proud to present this bonus episode of the Inner Moonlight podcast featuring our event for the Wild Detectives Eleventh Anniversary celebration on 4/20/25. We collaborated with storytelling event Talking Dirty After Dark for a super fun show we called Dirty Moonlight. You'll hear some of our favorite poets previously featured on Inner Moonlight alongside storytellers selected by Talking Dirty curator Raymond Butler. This show also includes a performance by Inner Moonlight curator Logen Cure. Happy anniversary to the Wild Detectives! Cheers to many more!
Performers in this episode:
1. Stephanie Grace Ceniza (storyteller)
2. Jennifer Elise Wang (poet)
3. Shawn Lee (storyteller)
4. Aaron Glover (poet)
5. Raymond Butler (storyteller, Talking Dirty curator)
6. Victoria Lopez (storyteller)
7. Lauren Kalstad (poet)
8. Cam Barnes (storyteller)
9. Logen Cure (poet, Inner Moonlight curator)
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all. This very special episode contains Inner Moonlight's Seventh Anniversary celebration from 4/9/2025, featuring encore performances from writers featured in the past year plus some Inner Moonlight favorites. We are so proud to present this episode!
1. Hannah Smith – January 2025
2. Nomi Stone – February 2025
3. Rae Henri – IM favorite since May 2024
4. Cynthia Miller – IM favorite since June 2024
5. Alissa Park – IM favorite since September 2024
6. Andrew Abrahamson – IM favorite since November 2024
7. Clara Bush Vadala – July 2024
8. Reverie Koniecki – May 2024
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 3/12/25, we featured poet Jessica Manack!
Jessica Manack holds degrees from Hollins University and lives with her family in her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her writing has appeared widely in anthologies and journals, including Still: The Journal, SWWIM Every Day, and Fine Print, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a recipient of a 2022 Curious Creators Grant and a 2024 Getaway Artist Fellowship, and serves as a Poetry Reader for TriQuarterly. Gastromythology is her first book. Keep up with her work at http://www.jessicamanack.com
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On Friday 2/21/25, we featured poet Rachel Richardson to launch her newest collection, Smother (W. W. Norton, 2025), joined by Dallas poets Nomi Stone and Tarfia Faizullah.
Rachel Richardson is the author of Smother, just out from W. W. Norton, and two previous books of poems, Copperhead and Hundred-Year Wave, from the Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and an NEA Fellow, and her poems have appeared in the New York Times, APR, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She lives in the Bay Area and teaches in the MFA program at St. Mary’s College of California. She is also currently in training as a wildland firefighter.
Poet and anthropologist Nomi Stone is the author of three books, most recently the poetry collection Kill Class (Tupelo, 2019), finalist for the Julie Suk Award, and the ethnography Pinelandia: An Anthropology and Field Poetics of War and Empire, first prize in the Middle East Studies Award from the American Anthropological Association and three other national prizes. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, Stone’s poems recently appear in The Atlantic, The Nation, Best American Poetry, POETRY Magazine, and American Poetry Review. Stone was most recently a Postdoctoral Researcher in Anthropology at Princeton and she is currently an Assistant Professor of Poetry at the University of Texas, Dallas.
Tarfia Faizullah writes books and teaches poetry at UNT.
www.innermoonlightpoetry.com
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 2/12/25, we featured poet Caitlin Cowan!
Caitlin Cowan is the author of Happy Everything (Cornerstone Press, 2024). She has taught writing at the University of North Texas, Texas Woman’s University, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Her work has received support from the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. Caitlin works in arts nonprofit administration for Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, where she serves as Director of International Tours and as Chair of Creative Writing. She also serves as Poetry Co-Editor at Pleiades and writes PopPoetry, a weekly poetry and pop culture newsletter. Caitlin lives on Michigan’s west coast with her husband, their young daughter, and two mischievous cats. Find her at caitlincowan.com.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 1/8/25, we featured poet Hannah Smith!
Hannah Smith is a writer from Dallas, Texas. Her poetry appears in Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Hannah’s full-length manuscript Common Prairie was a National Poetry Series Finalist, and she is the co-author of two collaborative chapbooks, Metal House of Cards (Finishing Line Press, 2024) and Astral Gaze (dancing girl press, 2025). Hannah works as the Production Manager for Southwest Review & New Pony.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 12/11/2024, we featured poet Andie Salm Carver!
Andie Salm Carver (they/she) is a queer writer and activist. They received their MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University, and their chapbook poetry collection, TRAILER TRASH, was originally published through Bottlecap Press. Andie lives in the Dallas Metroplex with their little cat, Young Bernie Sanders. You can read more of their work at ModusOperandiee.com.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 11/13/2024, we featured poet Caroline Earleywine!
Caroline Earleywine is a poet and educator who spent ten years teaching high school English in Central Arkansas. She’s a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, was a 2021 finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and has work in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Barrelhouse, NAILED Magazine, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Queens University in Charlotte and her chapbook, Lesbian Fashion Struggles, was published with Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020. She was a winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize, and her book I Now Pronounce You was published with Write Bloody Publishing in April 2024. She lives in Little Rock with her wife and two dogs.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 10/9/2024, we featured poet Emmy Piercy! We featured Emmy back in February 2019 before we were making a podcast. We’re so pleased to be able to bring this performance to you!
Emmy Piercy has been performing poetry within the Dallas literary community since 2016, where she has contributed to collaborative projects including White Rock Zine Machine and the Dallas Museum of Art’s Center for Creative Connection. Her work has appeared in Thimble and Impossible Archetype. She is a graduate student of English at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she studies the intersection of ecology and the written word.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 9/11/2024, we featured poet Jenny Molberg for a very special event co-sponsored by SMU Project Poëtica. We featured Jenny back in March 2020 before we were making a podcast. We’re so pleased to be able to bring this performance to you!
Originally from Dallas, Jenny Molberg is the author of three collections of poetry: Marvels of the Invisible (winner of the Berkshire Prize, Tupelo Press, 2017), Refusal (LSU Press, 2020), and The Court of No Record (Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, LSU Press, 2023). Her poems and essays have recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Cincinnati Review, VIDA, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, The Adroit Journal, Oprah Quarterly, and other publications. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, VCCA, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, the Sewanee Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference. She is Associate Professor and Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Central Missouri, where she edits Pleiades: Literature in Context.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 8/14/2024, we featured poet R. Flowers Rivera!
R. Flowers Rivera is native of Mississippi; she completed a Ph.D. at Binghamton University and an M.A. at Hollins University. She is the author of award-winning poetry collections Troubling Accents (Xavier Review Press 2013) and Heathen (Wayne State University Press 2015). She is a Callaloo and Idyllwild fellow.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 7/10/2024, we featured poet and veterinarian Clara Bush Vadala!
Clara Bush Vadala is a poet and veterinarian from Van Alstyne, Texas. In her work she explores the human animal bond, its various spiritual and spooky qualities and how this relates to life as a veterinarian, mother, and woman. Her chapbook, Book of Altars, was released this year from Belle Point Press, and her full-length collection, Resembling A Wild Animal, will be released later this year from ELJ Editions. www.innermoonlightpoetry.com
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 6/12/2024, we featured poet Lindsay Illich. We featured Lindsay back in August 2021 during our podcast-only days, and we are super stoked to present her live performance at the Wild Detectives!
Lindsay Illich is the author of three poetry collections Earthwhere (forthcoming June 2024), Fingerspell (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Rile & Heave (Texas Review Press, 2017), and the poetry chapbook Heteroglossia (Anchor & Plume, 2016). Rile & Heave won the Texas Review Press Breakthrough Prize in Poetry. She also co-authored Teach Living Poets (National Council of Teachers of English, 2021). She directs the writing program at Curry College in Massachusetts.
Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series for the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 5/8/24, we featured poet Reverie Koniecki!
Reverie Koniecki is a Black writer and educator living in Dallas, Texas. She earned her MFA from New England College. Her work has appeared in Guernica, HeavyFeather Review, Post Road, Rigorous Magazine and other places. Her chapbooks —to the god of sore feet and bad backs from Finishing Line Press and The Wars That Steer Us from Mouthfeel Press were published in 2023.