James Allen Hall

James Allen Hall (he/they) is a nonbinary, queer author of two books of poems and a book of lyric essays. Their most recent book, Romantic Comedy, won the 2020 Levis Prize selected by Diane Seuss and was published by Four Way Books in 2023. Their first book of poems is Now You're the Enemy (U of Arkansas Press, 2008). They are also the author of a book of lyric personal essays: I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, selected by Chris Kraus for the Essay Collection Award and published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center Press (2017). They’ve won awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Texas Institute of Letters, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment of the Arts (in 2025 and 2011, both in poetry). In 2024, James was the Paul Otremba Returning Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Their poems and essays have appeared widely, including in two editions of Best American Poetry, in The Pushcart Prize Anthology (2026), and in Best of the Net. A short story will appear in New England Review. They direct the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Chestertown, MD, where they are also an associate professor of English and edit the National Literary Journal Cherry Tree. James co-hosts, with poet extraordinaire Aaron Smith, Breaking Form: A Podcast of Poetry and Culture. Find it online at https://breakingformpod.buzzsprout.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Poems

"Inheritance at Corresponding Periods of Life, at Corresponding Seasons of the Year, as Limited by Sex" (The Adroit Journal)

American Poetry Review: “Premonition”

Academy of American Poets:  "Pittsburgh"

Iowa Review (online), “On Dark Days, I Imagine My Parents’ Wedding Video” (special mention in Pushcart 2020)

Academy of American Poets:  "Out from the Patches of Briers and Blackberries."

Diagram: "James Untitled" and "Self-Portrait as Boy With the Head of Goliath."

Bloom:  "Romantic Comedy."

“The Dolls” (Limp Wrist)

"Portrait of My Mother as the Republic of Texas" (first published in Rhino).

"The Enemy"(first published in Boston Review)

"Portrait of My Lover as Man in Polyester Suit (1980)" (first published in Boston Review)

"Portrait of My Lover Singing in Traffic" (first published in TriQuarterly)

Tinderbox Poetry Journal: "An American Porn Star Contemplates the Divine"

Under a Warm Green Linden: “Discipline and Punish” and “Dirty Joke”

CNF

Alaska Quarterly Review: "Be Destroyed"

Cutbank: "Prophecy"

Bennington Review:"I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well”

Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies: “Wholly Fragmented”

Critical Mass: "In the Ruins of Confession" 

Inter-

Views

The Poet and The Poem with Grace Cavalieri (2024).

Boxcar Poetry Review: "Danger By Desire: A Conversation Between Jericho Brown and James Allen Hall"

The Rumpus Interview: Blur, Cross, Pulverize, Confront, Remember.

Essay Daily: "Examining = extracting": A Conversation with James Allen Hall & Shaelyn Smith

Copper Nickel: “A Brief Symposium: Poets Writing Nonfiction”

University of Arizona Poetry Center (with Richard Siken)

Readings

Washington College, October 2023.

Wild and Precious Life Series. With Diane Seuss and Aaron Smith, 2023.

Station to Station. With Diane Seuss. 2021.