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AUTHOR OF 2024 INT’L LATINO BOOK AWARD HONORABLE MENTION, VOLCANIC INTERRUPTIONS • CALIFORNIA ARTS COUNCIL RECOGNIZED ESTABLISHED ARTIST FOR CENTRAL CALIFORNIA REGION

“This poetry collection is heart-led, a feast for the eyes, ears, and soul.”—Odilia Galván Rodríguez • “Myths and loss, yearnings and magic”—Cristina García

The poems in Variations in Blue address the aftermath of domestic violence through the transformative power of language, leading to healing and empowerment via the author’s journey into her Latine/x culture. 

The poems in Variations in Blue cycle through the traumatic residue of dysfunctional relationships, the complexities of Latinx representation through a series of ekphrastic poems, and reimagine Nicaragua as a homeland set in a volcanic landscape. Each section contains a series of poetic variations on a theme, and the poems reverberate and rotate through the indeterminacy of language. Najarro’s Variations in Blue insists that the complexities of experience must be understood one version at a time, each distinctly unfolding its unique design.

Freefalling from a scandal of her own making, reporter Frances Treadwell only thinks she has hit bottom when she finds herself alone and out of work in her ancestral farmhouse in Maine. Soon after she arrives, a meteorite crashes to earth in the woods behind her house, igniting a firestorm of malicious chatter among locals who suspect Frances is somehow connected to a larger, more sinister phenomenon. Caught between a petty criminal she can’t resist and a pair of unlikely suitors, Frances watches in horror as the events turn from near farce to life-shattering, irreversible tragedy.

Sweetly sexy, miserably funny, and a little scary, View From a Burning Bridge is an enthralling debut novel from a natural heir to Flannery O’Connor and Shirley Jackson.

"Volando bajito is a strong, raw, transparent book that makes us tremble. Readers can feel every poem with their entire body, their entire soul. Alicia Partnoy had to fly low, otherwise she couldn't have tracked down all that blood, all those scattered bones, all those spirits left hanging from the windmills' sails. It is a book of testimonial poems that forces us to remember that tender girl who always waits for us, a girl called Solidarity."

—Claribel Alegría

"The terse sensuality of these poems - their gentleness and unflinching courage in the face of devestation, of genocide - is so much more than instructive. It is poetry with the subtlety and insight of our greatest resources, intelligence and compassion."

—Gail Wronsky

"In Ally Acker's poems...the erotic and the spiritual grow...closer...Impressive...Such rare gifts bring call for rejoicing."

—William Matthews

"This is a book about beauty...pain...self-revelation...a brave transparency to existence and all it brings."

—Jane Hirshfield

With all the power of a long-brewing storm, the brilliant poet Jenny Factor finally returns to make public the interior work and spoils of decades in Want, The Lake, her second poetry collection.

This book of fifty-two poems spans twenty years of life—accumulated wisdom, images, and desires—with a dedication to craft that has been honed and clarified by time.

"Laurel Ann Bogen is an admirable poet with a distinctive voice. In this fascinating book, again and again she transforms her moments of joy, the wounds she has suffered, into a mouth, speaking her terse and immaculate poems, and often, miraculously, breaking into song."

—Edward Field

The running theme through the collection Wave as If You Can See Me is the progression of illnesses resulting in the death of the poet’s husband, and fiction writer Scott Ely, from the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Interspersed with these poems are her own explorations — in part distraction from the pain of watching her husband decline, in part a long-held desire into painting.

Since her early poems, Katharine Coles has been known as a poet who isn’t afraid to tackle big subjects that occupy the intersections of art and science, including how we know what is true (if we do). Driven by her insatiable curiosity and relying on a use of form and elision so deft it amounts to sleight-of-hand, Coles brings these big questions into small spaces in her seventh book, Wayward, moving the reader at mind-speed through brief meditations on love, marriage, and family; the permeable boundaries of the self; death; and perception. Though her subjects are deeply serious, Coles’ primary tools for addressing them include her wry wit and agile intelligence, which, taking nothing for granted, she deploys to examine our basic assumptions about the world and our experience within it. As always, Coles here uses technical skill to move her thinking in new directions—many of them at once.

We takes an unapologetically spiritual stance in bridging politicized divides, exploring conscious and unconscious prejudices with lyricism, warmth, and self-implicating humor, how we are shaped by and create our nation by how we see ourselves and others.

The poems investigate what unites us; how the personal is political, and the political is personal; changing our perceptions to heal families, friendships, and country of incivility and villainization by practicing greater compassion; trying to see past egos to souls, as “We” suggests in conversation with Whitman: “I celebrate my being, every atom/of myself and you, lamp and mirror/of all that is”; in a new Preamble to the Constitution; and in the feminist “Peace Hymn for the Republic.” We begins with a non-partisan vision of soul, and ends driving a rural road at dawn in “State of the Union Aubade,” both paeans to our common divinity.

30-year-old Bronwyn Artair, feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist, much to the dismay of her mentor, Diane Fenwick. After a year of living alone in Southern New Hampshire, enduring the indignities of her job, dumped by her boyfriend, she discovers her deep connection to the natural world has given her an ability to affect natural forces. When she finally accepts she really possesses this startling capability, she must then negotiate a new relationship to the world. Who will she tell? Who will believe her? Most importantly, how will she put this new skill of hers to use? As she seeks answers to these questions, she travels to Kansas to see the tornado maverick she worships; falls in love with Matt, the tabloid journalist who has come to investigate her; visits fires raging out of control in Los Angeles; and eventually voyages with Matt and Diane to the methane fields of Siberia. A woman experiencing power for the first time in her life, she must figure out what she can do for the world without hurting it further. The story poses questions about science and intuition, women and power, and what the earth needs from humans.

“Wedding in October is a rich and gorgeous novel, deeply rooted in memory, delicately constructed, filled with subtle and compelling characters. While grappling with universal themes and events, Geoffrey Clark creates a world that is unmistakably Midwestern: fertile and expansive, plain-spoken and harshly beautiful. Wedding in October will lay claim to readers’ minds and hearts, its hold both gentle and utterly tenacious.”

—Susan Dodd

“Geoffrey Clark formulated into words those sublime experiences that habitually leave no trace in the compartments of our consciousness save a film whose images have silvered.”

—Dennis Must

What Monsters You Make of Them interrogates ecology and injustice through shifting landscapes and ancient cities.

Stand astonished at a painting, venerate the mugshot of a poet, riff on a comedian’s quip, and recall a mentor persevering through grief. Speak of headhunters, of word origins, of saints and gods stitched into a newfound pantheon, of the multiverse as a source of reincarnation. Visit ancient cities, national parks, a sundry of gardens, and the ruins of a farmhouse. A teacher fails to help a student. A student explains war to her teacher. Seize back the forgotten. Kneel to not knowing. Interrogate ecology and injustice through shifting landscapes and know What Monsters You Make of Them.

"Camille Dungy has a garden of verses that spring up with the sunshine or hide with you in the dusk. "Cleaning" best sums up What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison, an amazing poetry collection, when Dungy pens "understanding clearly/what is fatal to the body./I only understand too late/what can be fatal to the heart." Take an ice tea and sit on the veranda or take a glass of wine and prop up in bed but whatever way you like your poetry, this book is a must."

—Nikki Giovanni, author of The Collected Poems of Nikki Giovanni and Black Feeling, Black Talk

"The sorrow here is ironic and unsentimental and yet Camille Dungy's vision is all joy. Even as anti-psalms, these poems are pure transcendence."

—Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and Dog Woman

"Camille Dungy shares with us in this manuscript her sharp, clear and honest ear and her unswerving commitment to the voice of life. She is a brave poet writing true poems and I salute the music and courage of her work."

—Lucille Clifton, author of Blessing the Boats and Mercy

In this poignant and unabashed self-examination, Seema Reza uncovers the lessons she learned through motherhood and a dysfunctional and abusive marriage, and how she used her discoveries to make a meaningful difference in the world. This lyrical, non-linear narrative memoir traces Reza’s journey from repressed suburban housewife to coordinator of a unique creative-expression military hospital program. Through observing her own experiences from the darkest moments of her life and investigating societal attitudes towards loss, love, motherhood, and community, Reza exposes her triumphs, weaknesses, fears and regrets, and undermines the idea that strength requires silence.

"I urge you to read this book. Kate Gale has a dream of justice and a wry sense of how hard it is to obtain. She confronts the wrongs of sex, of gender, of husbands and lovers, and sees how easily we confuse our desires with what is right. Somehow, in this process dangerous for a poet, she enters the garden of language and returns whole, humming."

—Benjamin Saltman

"With these poems—sparsely worded, richly lived—Geri Digiorno reminds us again just how entangled the delicate roots and tendrils of family and “individual” identity can become. Her lovingly subjective subjects include family, neighborhood, coming of age, friendship, betrayal, initiation, baptism, masquerade, transformation, sexual discovery and conquest. Sketching poetically, Digiorno—at heart a realist unafraid to risk sentimentality—relives a working-class life begun in San Francisco’s Noe Valley. In clipped, lower-case memoir-vernacular, she tells all, serving up clues to the meaning of life worldwide."

—Al Young

"The poems in Geri Digiorno’s White Lipstick explode with passion and power. Unforgettable and moving, these poems, rooted in pop culture, are ones you will return to again and again. In fearless poems about survival, Digiorno tells the story of an extraordinary woman’s life and tells it with humor and grace."

—Maria Mazziotti Gillan

"These direct and open-hearted poems speak with humor and insight of one woman’s life in the American West. Geri Digiorno’s clear voice draws us directly into the center of her world."

—Diane Di Prima

“It is a difficult thing to write simply and eloquently with quiet and intense passion in ways that are unflinchingly personal but also fold the reader into the depths of history and myth. This is partly what Adrianne Kalfopoulou’s poems do for me. They are also celebrations reminding me how words can perform acts of affirmation and joy no matter what griefs or complex experiences they contain. These poems attain the beauty of ritual.”

—T. Alan Broughton

Wild Honey, Tough Salt offers a prismatic view of Earth citizenship, where we must now be ambidextrous. The book takes a stern look inward calling for sturdy character and supple spirit, and a bold look outward seeking ways to engage grief trouble. The book begins with poems that witness a buoyant life in a difficult world: wandering New Orleans in a trance, savoring the life of artist Tove Jansson, reading the fine print on the Mexican peso and the Scottish five-pound note. Clues to untapped energy lie everywhere by the lens of poetry. The book then moves to considerations of the worst in us—torture and war: how to recruit a child soldier? How to be married to the heartless guard? What to say to your child who is enamored by bullets? In the third section, the book offers a spangle of poems blessing earth: wren song, bud growth, river’s eager way with obstacles. And the final section offers poems of affection: infant clarities of home, long marriage in dog years, a consoling campfire in the yard when all seems lost. The book will soften your trouble, and give you spirit for the days ahead.

In poems full of bounty, loss and the mysteries of the body, Taylor offers a rich, severe, memorable meditation about what it means to try to connect our bodies and our time on earth.

In 2010, Tess Taylor was awarded the Amy Clampitt Fellowship. Her prize: A rent-free year in a cottage in the Berkshires, where she could finish a first book. But Taylor—outside the city for the first time in nearly a decade, and trying to conceive her first child—found herself alone. To break up her days, she began to intern on a small farm, planting leeks, turning compost, and weeding kale. In this calendric cycle of 28 poems, Taylor describes the work of this year, considering what attending to vegetables on a small field might achieve now. Against a backdrop of drone strikes, "methamphetamine and global economic crisis," these poems embark on a rich exploration of season, self, food, and place. Threading through the farm poets—Hesiod, Virgil, and John Clare—Taylor revisits the project of small scale farming at the troubled beginning of the 21st century.

Worship the Pig, Gaylord Brewer’s eleventh collection, is by the poet’s own definition his “Americas book.” The migration begins from his Tennessee home to the Inside Passage of Alaska, then detours sharply south in a return to his beloved Costa Rica, then onward finally to the qualified paradise of Brazil’s Ilhabela. Brewer’s persistent obsessions—translating the call and challenge of the feral world, negotiating some truce with private ghosts—have never been more poignantly and sharply drawn. From chiseled lyrics to more expansive narratives—by turns reserved and raucous, always heartfelt and riveting—these new poems exhilarate. “No schematic for conquest, / no reckless conclusions, // no tenuous argument for connection / beyond the simple truth / of what accrues together.” At mid-career, the author called “the most natural poet in the country” by the Asheville Poetry Review continues to astonish.

Playful, kinetic, and devastating in turn, You Were Watching from the Sand is a collection in which Haitian men, women, and children who find their lives cleaved by the interminably strange bite back at the bizarre with their own oddities. In “belly,” a young woman abandoned by her only living relative makes a person from the mud beside her backyard creek. In “We Feel it in Punta Cana,” a domestic child servant in the Dominican Republic tours through his own lush imagination to make his material conditions more bearable. In “The Oldest Sensation is Anger,” a teenager invites a same-aged family friend into her apartment and uncovers a spate of disturbing secrets about her. Written in a mixture of high lyricism, absurdist comedy, and Haitian cultural witticisms, this is a collection whose dynamism matches that of its characters at every beat and turn.

John Weir, author of The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, a defining novel of 1980s New York in its response to the global AIDS crisis, has written a story collection that chronicles the long aftermath of epidemic death, as recorded in the tragicomic voice of a gay man who survived high school in the 1970s, the AIDS death of his best friend in the 1990s, and his complicated relationship with his mother, “a movie star without a movie to star in,” whose life is winding to a close in a retirement community where she lives alone with her last dog.