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 in fifty+ journals, including Arts & Letters, Malahat Review, Juked, Prime Number, Potomac Review, and Two Thirds North. He holds a PhD in English and is a voting rights activist.


Books
Selected work
- Fiction
9
- Poetry
13

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," "Illegal Sol," & "La Inmigrante"
Mojave River Review, 2019

Polar Dreams: 5 poems
Lime Hawk Arts Collective, 2014

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

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