The Rise of Lucky Jefferson
WHEN I founded Lucky Jefferson, I hadn’t been published in more than fifteen years. The last time I had shared my poetry in public was during a small reading for a radio station in Birmingham, Alabama, around 2007. It wasn’t until after I began my journey in a master’s program in English and creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University—after a tearfilled conversation with my mother about the publishing industry—that Lucky Jefferson became a reality.
Since I hadn’t been published or read my work in quite some time, my confidence wavered. And because I had studied advertising, art, and communications during my undergraduate years at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, I didn’t feel like an honest representative of the literary world. I feared no one would take my commitment to the industry seriously if I didn’t dedicate story. I cathartically used my frustrations to build a network to support emerging writers in my position—writers who may have studied law, medicine, or another field but found a calling to literary classics, to poetry; writers who are misled by publishers that hide behind faux commitments to people of color. I declared to reform the publishing landscape and bring communities together through contemporary stories and art. For so long I had held on to a trepidation that prevented me from sharing my work. And in starting , I reaffirmed my commitment to myself and helping others do the same. On August 25, 2019, I built a shabby website on Wix and enlisted the help of an artist to begin creating artwork for “Testament,” our first issue.
