Jackson Neal (He/ They) is a poet from Houston, Texas. They are a 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador for the Southwest and the 2019 Houston Youth Poet Laureate. Neal is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where they are pursuing a BFA in English and Dance.
Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom is a crossover of our coming of age universes. Exploring the interplay of adolescence and media, Dear Azula is a masterclass on how Generation Z see themselves reflected on screen, how they find themselves in characters when the world does not grant them the possibility.
These poems pay homage to the cartoon characters who made us the wicked lovestruck people that we are. These ubiquitous stories of teen ghost boys and water bending women gave wonder to a generation raised by recession. In illustrious villains we learned our own glamour. In chiseled chins and 2D teeth we learned desire. In Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom we bring the early 2000s renaissance of animation into our modern lives to unpack, celebrate, revel, and remember.
Azura & Jackson are quintessential. Their unbridled brilliance is combined as an uproarious gift of their collective literary voice. In this collection, the poets utilize childhood discovery, cocooned evolution, and poetic empathy – as lessons that serve. Compasses or conspirators? These writers in search of self, these writers in possession of self are both. Bear witness as they dominate the page in an irresistible act of liberation.
– Mahogany L. Browne, Author of Chlorine Sky
Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom plunges the reader into the desolate nostalgia of struggling to find one’s place in a world that has no vacancies for authenticity. Neal and Tyabji’s masterful transcendence through the popular animated form, from Teen Titans to The Last Airbender, pulses through each poem, forcing the reader to redefine love and its imagined limits.
– Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton, Poet Laureate of Houston
Buy Now“Pure nostalgia.” That’s what we think, at first, when opening Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom, but immediately we know this book is about how our obsessions easily filter into our own lives. Reading this book you will be completely flayed, wide open, asking yourself what lives inside your own memories, who are you and what have you become. And the book answers: love.
– Luther Hughes, Founder of Shade Literary Arts
