Lost Boys Revisited: Poetry

UPDATED 10.03.26 - AUTHOR JUDSON MITCHAM NO LONGER ABLE TO JOIN US. PANEL CONTINUES ON.

In his debut poetry collection Work Lunch, Alabama poet and musician Lee Bains draws on his own experience at the intersection of work and food—the daily ritual of a workday lunch. Orpheus Remains: New and Selected Poems gathers work from Clifford Brooks’s previous collections alongside new poems, in pursuit of confessing his full truth.  In his debut collection The Committee of Men, James Ciano explores the cycles of violence men inflict on one another and themselves, examining how silence, shame, and inherited expectations shape masculine identity. Let Your Heart Be Troubled is Judson Mitcham’s first collection of poems in two decades, in discerning conversation with his former selves, recombining stanzas from earlier poems to weave starting new narratives.

Purchase your book from Charis Books & More. When you check-out from that link, please mention that you will need to pick your book up at the event. Books will also be for sale on-site by Charis, and a portion of your purchase will benefit the Decatur Book Festival.

The Decatur Library Auditorium is on the Ground Floor (G in the elevator) of the building.

UPDATED 10.03.26 - AUTHOR JUDSON MITCHAM NO LONGER ABLE TO JOIN US. PANEL CONTINUES ON.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required, and seating is first come, first served. Signing information: Signing time: 3:00 PM

Signing location: Decatur Library Meeting Room

About the Authors

A cult songwriter forged in independent scenes whose work has carried him all over the U.S. and Europe, Lee Bains has received acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, and The Guardian. Lee has lent his work to support striking coal miners, immigrants’ rights groups, abortion funds, and anti-racism organizations. He has performed and read at Emory University, the University of Mississippi, Tulane University, Auburn University, and The Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden). He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works between tours as a handyman. His new book is Work Lunch: Poems.

Clifford Brooks is a poet, author, educator, broadcaster, and founder of The Southern Collective Experience, a cooperative of writers, musicians, and visual artists. Author of The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, Athena Departs, and Old Gods, he is editor in chief of The Blue Mountain Review and host of Dante's New South. His new book is Orpheus Remains.

James Ciano is the author of The Committee of Men and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis. He holds an MFA from New York University and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. Recent poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Bennington Review, The Hopkins Review, and The Yale Review. His reviews and writings on poetry have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the 2025-2027 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University, and lives in Decatur, Georgia. 

Judson Mitcham was the poet laureate of Georgia from 2012 to 2019. In 2013, he was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. His poetry has been widely published in literary journals, including Poetry, Harper’s Magazine, The Georgia Review, and The Hudson Review. He received an NEA Fellowship in Creative Writing and has been a Pushcart Prize recipient. Mitcham was the first writer to be awarded the Townsend Prize for Fiction twice—for The Sweet Everlasting and Sabbath Creek. His most recent novel, What You Cannot Tell, was published in 2026 by Mercer University Press. A native of Monroe, Georgia, he received his PhD from the University of Georgia in 1974 and taught psychology at Fort Valley State University until his retirement in 2004. He has served as adjunct professor of creative writing at Mercer University, Georgia College, and Emory University, where he directed the Summer Writers’ Institute. Mitcham lives in Macon, Georgia, with his wife, Jean. They have two children and four grandchildren. Mitcham’s new book of poems is Let Your Heart Be Troubled.