Dustin Brookshire

Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) debut full-length poetry collection, For All Of Us Faggots, is forthcoming from Iron Oak Editions in March 2027. Dustin is the author of five chapbooks: Repeat As Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025), Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023),  Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021), To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), and the forthcoming Contoured (Lily Poetry Review), whichis a collection of collaborative contoured villanelles written with Denise Duhamel, Beth Gylys, Kerry Trautman, & Donna Vorreyer.   Love Most Of You Too and Never Picked First For Playtime were finalists in the Poetry Chapbook category of the American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

He is the editor of When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024), a 2025 Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBTQ+ Anthology. When I Was Straight received a Kirkus Reviews verdict of “get it,” named to CLMP’s 2025 Pride Month reading list, and named to the CLMP Members’ Most-Celebrated Books of 2025 list.

Along with poet Julie E. Bloemeke, Brookshire is the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). In 2024, Let Me Say was awarded a Nautilus silver medal and named to the “Books All Georgians Should Read” list by the Georgia Center for the Book. In 2023, Let Me Say This was a finalist in the Poetry Anthologies category of the American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards. The Slowdown, episodes 1109 and 1139, featured Let Me Say This poems.

Brookshire is the recipient of the 2024 Jon Tribble Editors Fellowship at Poetry by the Sea, runner up for the 2024 Desert Rat Residency Poetry Prize, and a semifinalist for the 2025 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition. In 2023, his work was featured in Georgia Poetry in the Parks, and he was a finalist for the Key West Literary Seminar’s Scotti Merrill Award in 2021. Brookshire has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and three times for the Best of the Net. His work has been read on NPR and other radio states and earned him a residency through The Betsy Hotel’s Writer’s Room.

Brookshire’s poetry has been published in or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Five Points, South Carolina Review, Best American Poetry Blog, Verse Daily, Crab Orchard Review, Honey Literary, Jet Fuel Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Heavy Feather Review, Chiron Review, Assaracus, Gargoyle, Whiskey Island, South Florida Poetry Journal, South 85, Elm Leaves Journal, Olney Magazine, Mollyhouse, Emerge Literary Journal, The Rise Up Review, The West Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, FERAL: A Journal of Poetry & Art, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, and other publications.

Brookshire has been anthologized in Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on their Muses (Lethe Press, 2012), The Queer South: LGBTQ Writes on the American South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), Braving the Body (Harbor Anthologies, 2024), Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift (Ballantine Books, 2024), and Delicate Machinery: Poems for Survival and Healing (Sundress Publications, 2025).

He has led generative poetry workshops and/or participated on panels for the following organizations / institutions: AWP, O Miami, Decatur Book Festival, OutWrite DC Literary Festival, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Buncombe County Library System, Red Clay Writers Conference, Poetry Society of New Hampshire, and St. Augustine’s PoetFest.

Brookshire’s literary citizenship includes founding and editing Limp Wrist, founding and curating the Zoom-based Wild & Precious Life Series, curating Why I Write, serving as Director of Virtual Programs for Punch Bucket Lit, serving as Program Director for Reading Queer (2021-2023), being a founding member of FLAWN (2022-2023), establishing the Limp Wrist LGBTQIA+ Scholarship at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, establishing the Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize through South Florida Poetry Journal, and founding the South Florida Poets (now operating as the LGBTQIA+ & Friends).

He earned a BS in Public Policy from Georgia State University and a MFA in Creative Writing from Converse University’s Low-Residency MFA program.