Adrianna McCollum

Welcome

Adrianna McCollum is a writer of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.

She won First Place in Nonfiction in the 73rd Annual Jade Ring Writing Contest and has been published in A Year In Ink: Volumes 15 & 16, Creative Wisconsin Magazine, Defenestration Magazine, The Bark, and Wisconsin Writers Anthology 2022. She was featured in The Oregon Observer in August 2022 and January 2023.

Her nonfiction mostly recounts her experiences coming-of-age living with her father in Salt Lake City in the 1980s, while her poetry touches on themes of nature, identity, and motherhood.

Featured Work

“An arresting recollection of the unique environment of the author’s upbringing, full of insight, commentary, and a peculiar wonder.”

Wisconsin Writers Association Judge
on the Jade Ring Writing Contest-winning essay

Nonfiction

73rd Annual Jade Ring Writing Contest-winning nonfiction essay “Mormon Girl Hair and the Styrofoam Harem”

“Sacred Teachings of Cosmopolitan Magazine,” published in San Diego Writers, Ink’s A Year in Ink, Volume 16

Fiction

Peregrine from the Stories: A Novel

Read a blurb about Peregrine from the Stories

Poetry

“Seeking Starlight,” published in San Diego Writers, Ink’s A Year in Ink, Volume 15

“The Standoff,” published in Defenestration Magazine

“a warrior’s story,” dedicated to my late coworker, Suzette French

Book Review

Michelle Murray’s The Dream Walker Land of Mystica Series Volume One

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Adrianna McCollum

Adrianna McCollum is a writer of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She won First Place in Nonfiction in the 73rd Annual Jade Ring Writing Contest and has been published in A Year in Ink: Volumes 15 & 16, Creative Wisconsin Magazine, Defenestration Magazine, The Bark, and Wisconsin Writers Anthology 2022. She was featured in The Oregon Observer in August 2022 and January 2023.

Her nonfiction mostly recounts her experiences coming-of-age living with her father in Salt Lake City in the 1980s, while her poetry touches on themes of nature, identity, and motherhood.

She is working on final revisions of a middle-grade portal fantasy novel called Peregrine from the Stories. She was inspired to write in the fantasy genre after having an inexplicable experience while attending graduate school at Oxford. She is certain this is why so many of the world’s best fantasy writers come from Oxford, like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, and Philip Pullman.

She is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, Academy of American Poets, San Diego Writers, Ink and Wisconsin Writers Association.

Peregrine from the Stories: A Novel

Twelve-year-old Peregrine Everhart is an American girl living in Oxford, England. Trying to piece together clues after her father’s disappearance, Peregrine sneaks into a pub called The Raven and Bairn and discovers a door to another world. She is soon befriended by an eccentric old woman, Beatrix, who says she has answers. Soon Peregrine steps into another world and is greeted by a giant, talking raven with a periwinkle-blue beak. He is one of many Windkind who inhabit this world, colossal birds who start Peregrine on her journey to find her father. She must travel through dangerous Cachemar to reach the forest and enlist the help of the diminutive people who protect the elements of nature. There, Peregrine will learn the truth about who she is and how everyone is depending on her for their survival.

Seeking Starlight

Constellations dispatch their messages to me in blazing luminescence,
cracking through lightyears like a zillion neurons firing,
only to fizzle out at my doorstep.

The stars in the city suck.

The dead-air desert also sucks,
but Joshua trees point their bushy-tipped fingers to the sky,
beckoning starlight down to their Mars-scape bed,
and I recline to let the light wave over me.
But goddamn, people suck!
car headlights scream at each other,
light-saber fighting for the choicest spot,
a galactic battle waged between pick-up trucks.

This poem is about me trying to find enlightenment.
I’m not sure how far I should go with this.

Because you know technology can really suck too,
even simple things like the Lunar Beginners Telescope.
I touch the focus knobs and spin tiny Saturn rings
but I only see my eyelashes blinking back at me.

Trying so hard just sucks sometimes.

I tap my finger on the slick silver pad
and stream that true-crime show I’ve been watching.
Maybe I’ll try again next week.

Welcome

Adrianna McCollum is a writer of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.

Featured Work

Wisconsin Writers Association Judge on the Jade Ring Writing Contest-winning essay

Upcoming Events

Adrianna McCollum

Peregrine from the Stories: A Novel

Seeking Starlight

Wisconsin Writers Association Judge
on the Jade Ring Writing Contest-winning essay