Inner Moonlight

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 12/10/25, we featured poet LyriK Hunter!

LyriK Hunter is a Dallas-based poetic expressive artist, originally from Midland, TX. She’s a passionate poet, singer, speaker, actress, teaching artist, mentor and entrepreneur. She’s graced stages like The Black Academy of Arts & Letters, F.L.O.W. International (Brazil/Italy/France), and many other national and local stages. LyriK is former CEO of the award-winning Brown Sugah Lounge, and a very passionate community advocate, who strives daily to provide safe spaces for the community to gather and be heard, using her #PoetiKHealingMovement brand to promote healing and mental wellness through writing, poetry and the arts. Lyrik’s projects and creative works can be streamed, downloaded and purchased online and in person, including her debut EP #MuziKNPoetry Vol 1 and her book, “Love N Life Thru The Eyes of LyriK Vol 1”. Local community bookings are available via the Dallas CAP (Community Artist Program). Learn more at: https://linktr.ee/lyrik_hunter

⁠www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 11/12/25, we featured poet Amanda Johnston!

Amanda Johnston is a writer, visual artist, and the 61st Poet Laureate of Texas. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, as well as the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter. She is also the editor of the anthology Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, The Moth Radio Hour, Bill Moyers, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, American Short Fiction, and the Academy of American Poets. She is a former Board President of the Cave Canem Foundation and the founder of Torch Literary Arts.

⁠www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 10/8/25, we welcomed Courtney LeBlanc back to Inner Moonlight!

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the four full-length collections, most recently, Her Dark Everything. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press, and of the Poetry Coven, a monthly generative workshop. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning.

⁠www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 9/10/25, we collaborated with SMU Project Poëtica to feature three poets, Aaron Smith, Denise Duhamel, and Luisa Muradyan, all of whom have books published by SMU Project Poëtica/Bridwell Press!

Aaron Smith is the author of five books of poetry with the University of Pittsburgh Press, most recently Stop Lying (2023). With the poet Maureen Seaton, he co-authored the book Beautiful People (2025). He is a three-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a two-time finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. His work has appeared in The Baffler, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. He is the cohost of the podcast Breaking Form and an associate professor of creative writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

Denise Duhamel and the late Maureen Seaton co-authored six collections, the most recent of which is Tilt (Bridwell Press, 2025). Denise’s solo books include Pink Lady (Pitt Poetry Series, 2025), Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021), and Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). Blowout (Pittsburgh, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A recipient of NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, she is a distinguished university professor at Florida International University in Miami.

Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine and is the author of I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated (Bridwell Press, 2025) When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), and American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She holds a Ph.D. in Poetry from the University of Houston and won the 2017 Raz/ Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Additionally, Muradyan is a member of the Cheburashka Collective, a group of women and nonbinary writers from the former Soviet Union. Additional work can be found at Best American Poetry, the Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and Only Poems among others.

www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 8/13/25, we featured Austin poet Cindy Huyser!

Cindy Huyser is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Cartography (3: A Taos Press, 2025), the contest-winning chapbook, Burning Number Five: Power Plant Poems (Blue Horse Press, 2014), co-author of the collaborative limited-edition chapbook XIII: Taylor Swift-Inspired Poems (Float Press, April 26, 2025), and co-editor of Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems (Dos Gatos Press, 2016). She holds an MFA from Pacific University. Learn more at https://cindyhuyser.wordpress.com.

www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 7/9/25, we caught the final stop of MA Nicholson's tour for a very memorable show!

Michelle (M.A.) Nicholson is a New Orleans poet, editor, educator, journalist, and arts-organizer with work featured in Best New Poets 2022 and Winter in America (Again anthologies, as well as Trampoline Poetry, Peauxdunque Review, Diode Poetry Journal, New Orleans Review, Tilted House Review, and elsewhere. An M.F.A. graduate from the University of New Orleans—where she served as Associate Poetry Editor for Bayou Magazine—M.A. was the recipient of the 2021 Andrea-Saunders Gereighty Academy of American Poets Award and was Kenyon Review’s 2024 Peter Taylor Fellow. Her debut poetry collection Around the Gate was selected for The Word Works' 2023 Hilary Tham Capital Collection prize.

www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all. We are proud to present this episode featuring our special event from 6/11/2025, the Pride Open Mic featuring work by favorite queer Dallas poets and other queer heroes! Poets in this episode:

1. Kepler Goodwin
2. D. Cawthon
3. Lauren Brazeal Garza
4. Eva Regicide
5. Brian Duran-Fuentes
6. Steve Roberts
7. Jean Galante
8. Antoine
9. VP Crowe
10. Katie Fisher
11. Lisa Huffaker
12. Lauren Kalstad
13. Jennifer Elise Wang
14. Logen Cure

⁠www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. Curated by Dallas poet Logen Cure, the in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all! On 5/14/25, we kicked off our 8th year with featured poet Robin Turner!

Robin Turner’s poems, prose poems, and flash fiction have appeared in numerous publications, among them Rattle, The Texas Observer, Rust & Moth, DMQ Review, One, and Bracken Magazine. Her work has been tucked inside little poetry houses in Pittsburgh, paired with photographs in a Deep Ellum art gallery, and transformed into tiny artist books for Lisa Huffaker’s White Rock Zine Machine. Her chapbooks are Elegy with Clouds & (Kelsay Books) and bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press). A longtime community teaching artist and sometime reader for Sugared Water, she lives near White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas.

www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

We are proud to present this bonus episode of the Inner Moonlight podcast featuring our event for the Wild Detectives Eleventh Anniversary celebration on 4/20/25. We collaborated with storytelling event Talking Dirty After Dark for a super fun show we called Dirty Moonlight. You'll hear some of our favorite poets previously featured on Inner Moonlight alongside storytellers selected by Talking Dirty curator Raymond Butler. This show also includes a performance by Inner Moonlight curator Logen Cure. Happy anniversary to the Wild Detectives! Cheers to many more!

Performers in this episode:

1. Stephanie Grace Ceniza (storyteller)

2. Jennifer Elise Wang (poet)

3. Shawn Lee (storyteller)

4. Aaron Glover (poet)

5. Raymond Butler (storyteller, Talking Dirty curator)

6. Victoria Lopez (storyteller)

7. Lauren Kalstad (poet)

8. Cam Barnes (storyteller)

9. Logen Cure (poet, Inner Moonlight curator)

⁠www.thewilddetectives.com⁠

⁠www.talkingdirtyevents.com⁠

⁠www.innermoonlightpoetry.com

Inner Moonlight is the monthly poetry reading series at the Wild Detectives in Dallas. The in-person show is the second Wednesday of every month in the Wild Detectives backyard. We love our podcast fans, so we release recordings of the live performances every month for y'all. This very special episode contains Inner Moonlight's Seventh Anniversary celebration from 4/9/2025, featuring encore performances from writers featured in the past year plus some Inner Moonlight favorites. We are so proud to present this episode!

1. Hannah Smith – January 2025

2. Nomi Stone – February 2025

3. Rae Henri – IM favorite since May 2024

4. Cynthia Miller – IM favorite since June 2024

5. Alissa Park – IM favorite since September 2024

6. Andrew Abrahamson – IM favorite since November 2024

7. Clara Bush Vadala – July 2024

8. Reverie Koniecki – May 2024

⁠www.innermoonlightpoetry.com