LHUCA Literary Series featuring Natalie Scenters-Zapico April 17, 2026

Location: Onsite at LHUCA (511 Avenue K) in the Firehouse Theatre at 7:00 PM

Once per semester, the LHUCA Literary Series features a visiting writer, a TTU graduate writer, and undergraduate writer. Light refreshments will be provided. Our visiting writer for Spring 2026 is Natalie Scenters-Zapico, our graduate writer is Brody Lane Shappell, and our undergraduate writer is Lyndsi McMillin.

Natalie Scenters-Zapico is a fronteriza from El Paso, Texas. She is the author of three collections of poetry, My Perfect Cognate (Copper Canyon Press September 2025), Lima :: Limón (Copper Canyon Press 2019) and The Verging Cities (Center for Literary Publishing 2015).

Winner of Yale University's Windham Campbell Prize (2021), she has held a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation (2018), a Lannan Literary Fellowship (2017), and a CantoMundo Fellowship (2015).

Her first book, The Verging Cities, won the PEN/America Joyce Osterweil Award (2016), the GLCA New Writer's Award (2016), and the Utah Book Award (2016). Her second book, Lima :: Limón, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize (2020) and shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize (2020). Her books have been reviewed widely in publications like The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, and Publisher's Weekly.

Natalie's latest poems have been published or are forthcoming in publications like The Paris Review, The New Republic, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, New England Review, Best American Poetry 2024, and more.

Brody Lane Shappell is currently pursuing a PhD in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing at Texas Tech University and is working on his first poetry collection. His eco-centric poetry has been published in journals such as Cirque, The Fourth River, and SouthWest Review, and he has a series of poems forthcoming in an anthology titled In a Time of Change: Boreal Forest Stories, published by University of Alaska Press.

Lyndsi McMillin is an undergraduate student at Texas Tech majoring in Elementary Education. She works as a student assistant at Texas Tech's Child Development Research Center, where she enjoys working with (and reading to) preschool age students.