Justin Evans

Justin Evans is a poet and teacher, currently living in the rural desert of Northeastern Nevada. He is the author of four chapbooks of poetry and five full length collections of poetry, the most recent being Cross Country, a collaboration of epistolary poems with Jeff Newberry. Justin was born in Provo, Utah in 1969, and raised from the age of eight by his grandparents in Springville, Utah. A year after graduating high school in 1987, Justin joined the army, serving from 1988-1992. A communications specialist, he eventually served in Texas, Germany, Operation Desert Storm, and Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. After the army Justin returned to Utah where he attended Utah Valley State College, and then Southern Utah University. Justin has an Associate of Arts degree in Humanities, and a Bachelor of Science in History, with a minor in English Education. He also holds a Master’s degree in Literacy Studies from The University of Nevada, Reno. After one semester at UVSC as an adjunct writing instructor, Justin took a job teaching high school in rural Nevada, where he has taught for the past twenty years. Justin’s poetry has appeared in dozens of literary journals, most recently in Clover: A Literary Rag, Sugar House Review, The Laurel Review, diode, and Xavier Review. Thematically, many of Justin’s poems and books center on the landscape of Springville, Utah, and the surrounding countryside. His first chapbook, Four Way Stop, was a winner of the 2004 Main-Travelled Roads Chapbook contest. He has received an honorable mention from the Nevada Arts Council as part of the Artist Grants program for his poetry, and additional grants from the Nevada Arts Council for the publication of his third full length collection of poems, Sailing This Nameless Ship, in 2014, as well as grant money in order to attend writing workshops. His poetry has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and also once for the Best of the Net. For six years he was the editor of the online journal, Hobble Creek Review.