AJ Wright

from The River on our Hands

"170'"

"Boy's Guide to Pyrotechnics" 

"Good American Speech"

"Our Daddy's Rat Gun"

"We Build an Airplane"

"I Want to Tell You What I Know"

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AJ Wright is a poet born in the Ohio River Valley region of West Virginia. She spent her early childhood in a house that stood in the shadow of the Pleasants Power Station at Willow Island. Her work explores the intersections of landscape, labor, and memory in Appalachian communities shaped by industry and environmental change. She is the founding editor of Pictura Journal, and her poems have appeared in Thimble Literary Magazine, Antiphony Journal, wildscape. literary journal, River and South Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and was awarded an Oak Ledge Residency at Hindman Settlement School in 2025. She currently lives five miles downriver from her hometown. The River on Our Hands is her first book.