An Evening with Shelagh Powers Johnson, Diana Rojas, & Lauren D. Woods

Shelagh Powers Johnson, Diana Rojas, and Lauren D. Woods will each present their work.

Crossing geographies and time periods, each of these collections probes the tension between internal and external realities. They take on questions of individualism vs. community, family relationships across love and disappointment, and the stories we tell ourselves about the world.

This promises to be a lovely "sampler" evening of work by these beautiful writers.

Order A HISTORY OF EXISTING LIFE here!

Order LITANY OF SAINTS: A TRIPTYCH here!

Order GREAT GROWN-UP GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE here!

Shelagh Powers Johnson is the author of A History of Existing Life (Broken Tribe Press, 2025). Her work has appeared in the Portland Review, the Grace and Gravity Anthologies, The Plentitudes, and Ghost Parachute, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. Shelagh teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Bowie State University and is faculty editor of the university's literary magazine, The Torch. She lives outside Baltimore with her husband, daughter, cats, and sixteen-year-old dog.

Diana Rojas is the author of Litany of Saints: A Triptych (Arte Público Press, 2024), the forthcoming novel, They Hold Grudges (Arte Público Press, 2026), and the forthcoming children’s book, Clara’s Big Green Coat (Piñata Books, 2027). Her essays are featured in Grit & Gravity, The Washington Independent Review of Books, Latino News Network, and the WWPH anthology America’s Future, among others. A member of the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, she lives taxed and unrepresented in Washington, DC.

Lauren D. Woods is the author of The Great Grown-Up Game of Make-Believe, a short story collection that won the 2024 Autumn House Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collections. Her stories and essays have appeared in Best Small Fictions, The Antioch Review, The Normal School, Passages North, and elsewhere. Lauren works in consulting and lives in Washington, DC with her husband, four children, and a variety of pets.

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