Lorna Wood

Lorna Wood was raised in Oberlin, Ohio, by a composer and an art historian. She received degrees in violin performance and English from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in English from Yale University. After graduate school, she was an instructor for six years at Auburn University. Lorna's debut poetry collection, The Great Garbage Patch: Reflections on Fascism, is out on Alien Buddha Press. She also has a novel, The Jesus Wars, on Amazon, and a novella, Family Values, available on Kindle. She was a featured writer in the 2022 erbacce-prize, won second prize in the 2018 Loquat Literary Festival contest, co-won third prize in Online Writing Tips' 2019 fiction contest, and was a finalist in the 2022 rinky dink chapbook contest, the 2017 Jerry Jazz Musician contest, the 2016 Neoverse Short Story Competition, and the 2016 Value' Sigil contest at Sharkpack Poetry Review. The Dumping Grounds named her poem "Mercy" a feature of the month (2022), and her poem, "Reflux," was shortlisted for Into the Void's 2016 contest. Lorna has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poetry has been favorably reviewed on New Pages (15 Dec. 2016), and her blog, "Word Music," was featured in Mslexia. Her stories, creative nonfictions, and poems not included in The Great Garbage Patch have appeared in Green Splotches, Half Hour to Kill, 100subtexts, t'ART, Personal Bests Journal 5, Coalition Works, The Pine Cone Review, Grand Little Things, 2% Milk, WhimsicalPoet, Otherwise Engaged, FEED, Litterateur, Fevers of the Mind (Wolfpack Contributor), Poetic Sun, Kindle Vella, Right Hand Pointing, Quaranzine, Schlock!, Nevermore, MacQueen's Quinterly, cc&d, 34 Orchard, Lucky Jefferson (365), Coffin Bell, Doubleback Review, Poems for the Thoughtful Young (B Cubed Press), Daikaijuzine, Litro (USA) Lab, Courtship of Winds, Brave New Word, M58, Scarlet Leaf Review, NoSleep Podcast, Canyons of the Damned, Five:2:One (#thesideshow), Poetry WTF?!, Mysterical-E, Wild Violet, Cacti Fur, Every Writer, and the following anthologies: Contemporary Poems--2022 (Fresh Words), Bullshit Lit 01, Love (Pure Slush), A Monster Told Me Bedtime Stories (Soteira Press), Escape Wheel (Great Weather for MEDIA), Horror USA: California (Soteira Press), What We Talk About When We Talk About It (Darkhouse), and Dark Magic (Owl Hollow Press), among others. She has also published scholarly essays on the American Renaissance, children's literature, and Lolita. Lorna's son, William Wehrs, wrote Five Scary Adventures in Playtime (illustrated by Lorna and now on Kindle) for his art class when he was eight. William is a social studies teacher with a master's degree in education from Lehigh University. In 2022 he was a winner in the Kansas Horizon Awards, which recognize outstanding first-year k-12 teachers. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a B.A. from Ursinus College, where he majored in history and minored in film studies. His essay on film music appears in the Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism, and his honors thesis, "Rape Culture: Tools of Oppression," and Summer Fellows paper, "The Rise of Political Factions in the United States: 1789-1785," are digitalcommons dot ursinus dot edu.