The VCU Visiting Writers Series is pleased to host a joint-reading by MFA Alumni Lea Marshall and AJ White.

Lea Marshall’s writing has appeared in Imagining: A Gibney Journal, The Atlantic, Dance Magazine, and elsewhere and her poetry has been published in Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology, Hayden’s Ferry Review, JAMA, The Penn Review, Diode, and Rogue Agent, among other journals and anthologies. She was recently named a Finalist for Palette Poetry's Nature Writing Prize and Shenandoah's Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. She worked as a producer and arts administrator for over 20 years, earning her MFA along the way from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her debut collection, The Slow Hammer of Roots, was published in 2025 by Broadstone Books. Lea currently works as a grant writer and lives with her family in Charlottesville, Virginia.

AJ White is a poet and educator from Georgia. AJ’s debut poetry collection, Blue Loop, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Chelsea Dingman and published by University of Georgia Press. AJ has won the Fugue Poetry Prize, The Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry, and received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poems have been published recently in The Account, Best New Poets, Blackbird, Overheard, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. AJ lives and teaches creative writing in New York.