"Subterranean salt mines, dredged figureheads, bags of chicken fat, highways, minivans held together by tape, repossessed streetlights, the shade of lipstick chosen by The Supremes—everything is alive at once in Quartararo’s prose, all of it shaping and unsettling the notion of self in the 'blank' city of Detroit, where history is both as persistent and ignorable as the weeds that push their way through cracks in concrete. Quartararo removes all hierarchy between self and artifact; each thing lives on the page with poetic attention, so the reader is host to the reverb that rises up from the spaces between them, the reverb of trying to make a life in a place that is both here for the taking and already punishingly, gloriously full."

Jennifer Quartararo holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Michigan University and her essays have appeared in Hotel Amerika, Quarter After Eight, saltfront: studies in human habit(at), The Recorded Reading Archive, and Hobart, among others. Originally from Maine, she’s been based in Detroit since 2017, during which time she’s taught creative writing to kids in Detroit Public Schools through the organization InsideOut Literary Arts, to kids in juvenile detention through the organization Youth Arts Alliance, as well as to adults through the writing space Room Project.