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he/him | Writer, short fiction, poetry | Evans, GA, United States
Richard Downing has won the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest, the New Delta Review’s Matt Clark Prize, New Woman Magazine’s Grand Prize for Fiction, Solstice’s Editors’ Award and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work appears internationally in sixty+ journals, including Malahat Review, Electric Literature, Consequence, Juked, Prime Number, and Two Thirds North. He holds a PhD in English and is a voting rights activist.
Books
Selected work
Weather--or Not
Punk Eek, 2026
There’s Something About a Woman in Uniform | Neon & Smoke
Neon & Smoke, 2026
Mass
Stickman Review, 2026
If a tree falls in a podcast, does it make a sound?
Interstice Journal, 2026
Facial Features
The Penmen Review, 2026
"Investments"
Grub Street, 2026
Lost Dogs and Pipe Bombs
For Page and Screen, 2026
Ramps
storySouth, 2025
Everybody's got to be someone
MacQueen's Quinterly, 2025
Bite-Size Billionaires
Freedom Fiction Journal, 2025
Bald spotting
Meniscus, 2025
You’re a comedian? Me too
Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, 2025
The Popularity of Bombs
Welter Journal, 2025
Stained-Glass Jesus
Two Thirds North, 2023
Governor
Unlikely Stories, 2023
The Church of the Blood of the Whitest Lamb
The Malahat Review, 2022
Expiration Dates
Unlikely Stories, 2022
John Cage Plays the Bull's Head
Arts & Letters: A Journal of Contemporary Culture, 2017
Full-Service Fat Girl
Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, 2015
Touching Marilyn, Touching God
Composite Arts Magazine, 2012
3-Way
Gemini Magazine, 2020
"Prequel," "Backseat Myths," "Sol ilegal," & "La Inmigrante"
Mojave River Review, 2019
Polar Dreams: 5 poems
Lime Hawk Arts Collective, 2014
Again (editor's award)
Writecorner Press, 2010
Four Steps Off the Path: a chapbook
YellowJacket Press
13 "My God" poems
Puff Puff: Poetry, Prose, & a Play, 2013
History Dream #24: Po-Woh-Ge-Oweenge
200 New Mexico Poems, 2012
"Wounded Knee" & "Anne, Anne, Anne & Norton"
Prime Number Magazine, 2012
Howl Again
OccuPoetry, 2011
Pole Dancing
Spector Magazine, 2011
"Crossing the Chachagua Bridge" and "The Tip"
Juked, 2009
Rachel Corrie's Peace
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 2006
F Is the Hardest
Tattoo Highway
Craning
The Dire Elegies
"Exotic Plants" and "Reflexology"
Crosscut Literary Magazine, 2006