Simone John and Krysten Hill in Gramma Poetry

hhsgo_blue_A few months ago, Simone John (author of the forthcoming collection, Testify) spoke to our own Krysten Hill about How Her Spirit Got Out.

As we continue to face so much malice and racism from the current administration in Washington, we’re finding it’s increasingly important to heed these artists’ words:

SJ : You and I have talked about how it feels like there’s something in the air right now for black creatives and makers. Like the atmosphere is charged. What’s your take on the situation? What does that look like, to you, in the poetry world?

KH : We talked about how black creatives and makers have always been doing work to document the time with a hard eye. Nikki Giovanni and Audre Lorde both document their truth and love for their community, while using their voices to shape the future of their community. For me, they’ve also reflected how creativity and imagination are essential to shaping the future. I’ve seen this future-work in poets like Danez Smith and Porsha O that are part of a rich tradition of poets that unabashedly speak to the realities of the black experience. I see this in young poets I teach and other youth poets in the Boston community. In all of their work I see and feel a continuous revolution against the damaging forces of racism, misogyny, and queerphobia. For me, poetry has always been a space for active resistance, testimony, learning, and unlearning.

As I develop my identity as an artist, I find myself seeking artistic spaces that are talking to each other and crying with each other and showing up for each other in a way that makes ferocious art possible. Personally, one way that I survived 2016 was through communities and intimate friend spaces invested in conversations about social justice and witnessing. I made decisions to leave spaces in Boston that were too cliquish or that allowed hate speech and discrimination to happen under the guise of “free speech.” At times, this made for a lonely creative life. Productive creative spaces build people up and welcome in strangers so that they can make brave art together. I’ve seen this life-changing work in spaces like the House Slam at The Haley House Bakery Café and in organizations like The Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective (MassLEAP) and Whole Soul Health in Boston. Even when I can’t make it out to events, I see how these spaces affect and transform my students and community and promote healthy practices for creatives. This atmosphere is what I’m responding to and finding courage in as an artist.

Read the full interview at Gramma Poetry.

And we’re not the only ones taking solace in Krysten’s words.

Janice Worthen at Small Press Distribution praised HHSGO as an SPD staff pick:

Jill McDonough calls this sharp little collection “a middle finger tucked in the hip pocket of your favorite dress.” A middle finger, yes, and a fist held up, black and beautiful… But these poems are also hands held, palms out, hands cuffed behind, flesh that can’t stop the bullet, tears mixing with blood as the calendar turns. They are the voice that rises even as it breaks, radiant with power, “beautiful / and frightening / and free.” Hill writes “we told to be silent / about our magic…our wild I spawning / this flourish without their approval.” But the words, the ghosts, will get out: “Gonna learn how to speak because silence / is father to son to mama to brother to / sister to cousin to friend to rape and / they ain’t gonna tell us what we remember anymore.” This is a collection to be carried along, yes, and spoken aloud.”

We’re heartened to see Krysten’s work finding its audience. Check out the full list at SPD and order your copy of HHSGO today.

DigBoston interviews Carissa Halston for the ICHH marathon reading

ICHH_posterLess than ten days from our marathon reading of It Can’t Happen Here and we’re so pleased to announce that DigBoston is our media sponsor for the event!

They’ve interviewed our own Carissa Halston about marathon readings, the First Amendment, and the role writers play in defending democracy:

“The tenets of democracy speak directly to freedom, but US laws and legal documents have often been written (or interpreted) according to a privileged bias, so, for every right and civil liberty we’ve got, there have been at least two amendments that had to be introduced later to make it clear that women and people of color are also entitled to that basic human right. To that end, in any country where democracy is touted as the foundation of society, the writers of that country need to chronicle the many ways democracy fails. Who democracy fails and how often and why. It’s deadly important information, especially when democracy fails so many people on a regular basis.”

They also asked their readers to suggest more novels about fascism, so once we’re done at the Booksmith on 4/1, we’ll all have more to read.

(Isn’t that always the way?)

Don’t forget to RSVP on Facebook so we’ll know to save you a seat—and some pizza and coffee and maybe some cake—and we’ll see you next week!

 

Boston Cultural Council grant + two readings at Brookline Booksmith!

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If you didn’t know, Aforementioned Productions is based in Boston. We’ve lived in a few cities now (Boston, New York, Baltimore), and Boston has our heart. So, late last year, we had immense pleasure of receiving news that we’ve received an organizational grant from the Boston Cultural Council for 2017. It covers a small portion (5%) of our operating costs, but it still feels rewarding to be recognized by this city that has meant so much to us.

The best part of that grant is that we’ll get to spend it on all the great authors and performers whose work we want to support, like Krysten Hill, whose galvanizing new chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out, is already in its third printing. She’ll be reading next month at Brookline Booksmith with Ben Berman, so if you’re in Boston, and you missed her release party and her inspiring reading at the Boston Public Library for the GB Writers Resist event in January, you won’t want to miss this event!

Also, because we love the crew at the Booksmith, we’re especially excited to announce that they’ll be hosting our marathon reading of It Can’t Happen Here! So, please join us for an event of literary resistance when the fine crew at Brookline Booksmith will be hosting us overnight, March 31 at 7pm-April 1 at noon (ish). Readers include AP founders Carissa Halston and Randolph Pfaff, as well as Shuchi Saraswat, Josh Cook, Catherine Parnell, Kurt Klopmeier, Karen Locasio, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Aaron Devine, Maria Hugger, Julia Kennedy, Sam Cha, Simeon Berry, and more! This event is free and open to the public, and will involve resistance, subversive classic literature, a table of books you’re going to want to buy, plus free cupcakes (and probably wine). So, join us at Brookline Booksmith at the end of next month and stay up all night while we read Lewis’s sharp-sighted and sharp-tongued classic about one journalist’s fight against fascist America.

And if you need another reason, check out this promo image, designed by our ringleader and AP co-founder, Carissa Halston:

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AWP recap, an upcoming marathon reading, plus the 2017 AIDS Walk in Boston

It’s been nearly a week since we got back from DC for the annual AWP conference. We felt strange being in DC, happy to see so many friends while many of us feel unsafe in the nation’s capitol due to the current GOP administration.

But we found ways to act up and to resist. We asked apt contributors who stopped by the table to start a conversation [heart] with the administration. We were lucky to see so many apt contributors take part—Ray Shea, Glenn Shaheen, Suzannah Russ Spaar, Lucia LoTempio, Simeon Berry, Alex McElroy, Kurt Klopmeier, Elisa Gabbert, Andrew Bertaina, Aaron Brown, Gillian Devereux, Justin Lawrence Daugherty, Lena Bertone, Yun Wei, Emily Jaeger, Shannon Austin, Danielle Evennou, Meghan Lamb, Kendra Fortmeyer, and Gregory Crosby, and you can read their Conversation Hearts at our Instagram page.

We also had the opportunity to host five great apt contributors and AP authors at a reading on Friday night at the Black Squirrel.

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Everyone was at the top of their game, and you can watch a snippet of Krysten Hill’s reading, specifically her poem “Prayer” from her recently released chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out.

We also co-sponsored a candlelight vigil for free speech on Saturday night across the street from the White House, where we heard so many heartening speeches and readings from astounding writers, including Literary Firsts  alum, Melissa Febos, whose speech ended with, (our paraphrase) “A vigil means staying awake and alert during the time when you would normally be asleep. Don’t go to sleep. This vigil is going to last long after we throw these candles away.”

In keeping with that sentiment, we’re committed to staying awake and continuing to resist. We’re working on two events in the Boston area:

First, a marathon reading of Sinclair Lewis’s satirical (though now potentially prescient) political novel, It Can’t Happen Here, which involves a journalist’s fight against the fascist regime of a new president in 1930s US. The reading will be free and open to the public and take approx. 16 hours, but we’re looking forward to it, and we’ll have more info on the date and location soon.AP_AW2017

Second, Randolph and I (Carissa) are taking part in the AIDS Walk in June. We’ve done so before as course marshals, but now we’ve assembled an Aforementioned team to walk and raise money and awareness for those living in Boston and Massachusetts with HIV and AIDS. If you’re interested in walking with us, we’d love to have your support! Just visit our page at the AIDS Action Committee site, and click “Join Team.”

And if you’re too far away, or you can’t make it, we hope you’ll consider sending a donation. You can read about where your donation goes at the AAC site.

We feel this cause is particularly important now, with the Affordable Care Act at risk of being eliminated. People with pre-existing conditions will be particularly vulnerable to losing their access to healthcare. We want to help them as much as we can, and we’d love to have your help. Even if you’re not in Boston, and even if you don’t have the means to make a donation, we hope you’ll spread the word and help us reach as many people as possible.

How to find us at AWP 17

Dear readers, AWP is just 3 days away.

During the book fair, you can find us at table 431-T. We’ll be there with copies of every issue of apt, as well as all our chapbooks and full-length titles. We’ll be giving away some readerly and writerly gifts every day of the conference, and there’ll be a special discount on subscriptions to apt!

Plus, on Friday night, we’re hosting a reading in the tap room at The Black Squirrel. Featuring Joanna Ruocco, Dolan Morgan, Tracy Dimond, Elizabeth Wade, and Krysten Hill! Free food (while it lasts), and blood and roses from our host and EIC, Carissa Halston, who is (more or less) the cat you see pictured below.

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And, on Saturday night, immediately following the conference, we’re co-sponsoring a candlelight vigil in Lafayette Square for the First Amendment. Check out more details on Facebook, and if you can make it, we’d love to see you there.

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Events, old and new!

Clockwise from upper left: Amanda Torres, Brionne Janae, Krysten Hill, and Simone John.

The brilliant poets who read for the HHSGO release party. Clockwise from upper left: Amanda Torres, Brionne Janae, Krysten Hill, and Simone John

If you weren’t able to make it to the How Her Spirit Got Out release party, first of all, we missed you. But secondly, you missed out. Obviously, we’re very familiar with the content of Krysten’s book. But it means so much to hear her read these poems. She shone and showed us all how absolutely necessary her work is. And Simone John, Brionne Janae, and Amanda Torres wowed us again and again.

And if you weren’t able to make it to the Boston Public Library for the first Greater Boston Writers Resist event, Krysten read there as well, and the whole room cheered her on. You can watch a video of her reading, courtesy of WGBH’s Forum Network.

And, if you’re in the Boston area and still haven’t had a chance to catch Krysten reading, you’re in luck! She’ll be at the following events in the upcoming months:

Friday, Jan 27 – 7pm
Belt It Out reading series
Courtside Lounge
Cambridge, MA

Thursday, Mar 16 – 7pm
Reading with Ben Berman
Brookline Booksmith
Brookline, MA

Poets and Pints reading series
Aeronaut (hosted by Porter Square Books)
Somerville, MA
(Date and time to be announced!)

And15940868_10154049971290689_3850647147929325445_n if you’re going to this year’s AWP conference, we’ll be there with you. From February 8-11, we’ll be in Washington, DC for the book fair and the readings. You can find us at table 431-T where we’ll be giving away writerly and readerly gifts, and there will be an assortment of AP editors and contributors managing the table. Stop by to meet co-founding editors, Carissa Halston and Randolph Pfaff, as well as Krysten Hill, and possibly other assorted AP writers. And don’t forget to come to the tap room at The Black Squirrel on Friday, Feb 10 for our AWP offsite reading, featuring Joanna Ruocco, Krysten Hill, Dolan Morgan, Tracy Dimond, and Elizabeth Wade! Lovingly hosted by apt EIC, Carissa Halston, who designed that poster with the idea that she was the lady and the tiger, and she’d be roaring these writers’ names.

And if you are in town for AWP, you can pick up a copy of our latest print issue of apt, featuring longform stories and poems from Doug Paul Case, Sonja Condit, Gregory Crosby, Krysten Hill, and Joanna Ruocco! We just got copies today, and we can’t wait for you to see them! Here’s a peek in advance. And for those of you who aren’t making the trek, you can of course order copies online.

And, finally, as co-sponsors of Greater Boston Writers Resist, we’re enraged at the latest news from Washington, but that’s been the case since late October. Nonetheless, we’re looking forward to seeing so many of our friends in DC, and to stand beside them on Saturday, February 11 to hold a vigil for free speech. Our EIC, Carissa Halston, wrote an impassioned plea to save the First Amendment in her editor’s note for the latest issue of apt. She wrote it in November, just as the censorship was beginning. And now, with the gag order on climate change, and threats to any White House staff who speak to members of the press, this is a violation of our freedom of speech and our freedom of the press. Violations to the Constitution. It hasn’t even been a week.

Which is to say, DC friends, Baltimore friends, Virginia friends…we’ll see you very soon and we’ll be protesting as loudly and as hard as we can.

HHSGO release party this Friday!

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Please join us at Lir on Friday, January 13, at 7pm to celebrate the release of Krysten Hill’s debut chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out!

Featuring readings from Brionne James, Simone John, Amanda Torres, and Krysten Hill! Hosted by Carissa Halston.

ABOUT THE BOOK
How Her Spirit Got Out is a lively, urgent song. Answering the writers whose voices raised her, Hill calls on Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, and Zora Neale Hurston to help her navigate the complicated landscape of selfhood. Hill’s speaker, wise and direct, open yet elusive, also sings for the women who brought her up: her aunt, her grandmother, and her mother. These spirits who’ve guided her life and taught her through example how black women persevere, have given her the means to bear witness to an age of racial violence. With intensity, audacity, and a darkly comic wit, Hill grapples with the question of how to fight “a city that knows you’re unarmed,” rendering each poem as a weapon and a shield, and using both for self-defense.

This event is free and open to the public.

RSVP at Facebook

 

READER BIOS

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Krysten Hill is an educator, writer, and performer who has showcased her poetry on stage at The Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Blacksmith House, Cantab Lounge, Merrimack College, U35 Reading Series, Mr. Hip Presents, and many others. She received her MFA in poetry from UMass Boston where she currently teaches. Her work can be found in B O D Y, Muzzle, PANK, Winter Tangerine Review, apt, Amethyst Arsenic, Damfino Press, ROAR, and Write on the DOT. She is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. She is the author of a chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out, now available from Aforementioned Productions.
(author photo credit: Jonathan Beckley)

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Simone John’s poetry brings her to classrooms, community events, and campuses to read and lead discussions. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, with an emphasis on racial identity studies and documentary poetics. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Wildness, The Pitkin Review, Public Pool, and The Writer in the World. Testify, Simone’s first full-length collection, is forthcoming from Octopus Books in 2017.

 

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Brionne Janae is a Southern California native who came to Boston to get an MFA at Emerson College. While in California, Brionne received her B.A. at U.C. Berkeley where she was a Student Teacher Poet in the Poetry for the People movement. Brionne is currently an instructor at Bunker Hill Community College. Her work as a poet has been published or is forthcoming in Plume, Apogee Journal, Toe Good Poetry, Redivider, Fjords Review, and others. Brionne is the winner of the 2014 Muriel Craft Bailey Contest from the Comstock Review judged by Kwame Dawes, and her first manuscript was selected by Michael Ryan for Emerson College’s Best Thesis Award.

 

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Amanda Torres is a mexicana writer, singer, teacher, and organizer. She’s received several awards for her writing and performance, including the Union League Civic Arts Foundation Award for Fiction and the National Brave New Voices Slam Competition. She founded the first Youth Advisory Council at Young Chicago Authors and co-founded L@s Eloter@s, a socially engaged Latino/a writing teachers collective. Amanda serves as the Festival Director for the Louder Than A Bomb Teen Poetry Slam, and co-founded Mass LEAP, the youth spoken word programming arm of MassPoetry where she currently serves as Program Director. Please give a warm welcome to Amanda Torres.

 

WRRR reflection, How Her Spirit Got Out, and apt 7

Readers, we’ve been subsumed by all the post-election news and the scary prospects for our country. We’re trying to find ways to hold our officials accountable for their choices in representing us, and making their voices reflect ours.

But, ultimately, the incoming administration is proving they don’t care about the integrity of a free press or free speech, so we’re going to have to get louder in our support of our ideals and our support of the work of writers whose voices are integral in reminding us what’s at stake: honesty, choice, truth, and our trust in communication.

Last month, we produced White Rabbit Red Rabbit at OBERON. The show was well received, garnering 4 out of 5 stars from Boston Events Insider. From Gwen Walsh’s review: “Jen Taschereau, whose amiable demeanor effectively put the audience at ease during a story which was driven by an oscillation between tension and playfulness…[displayed] true commitment to the act… I can’t stop thinking about this play.”

I (the ever-shifting pronouns–I here is Carissa, as always) have spent the past month thinking about Nassim Soleimanpour’s play. I performed it the first night, then watched Jen and Sam Cha perform is the subsequent evenings. Every night, audience members told me they felt the material was unfortunately timely, in light of the election, which had taken place the week prior. Every night, I watched the play and thought about how careful Soleimanpour was in choosing his words and crafting his metaphors. He told us, in the script, how careful he had to be. I’d originally scheduled the production as a potential vent following the election, as a combination cautionary tale for what we’d avoided and method of girding ourselves for the backlash (because I thought Clinton would win, but I was also aware that violence was coming either way).

But there we sat, too late for caution and its lessons.

Still, I’m thankful for the opportunity to perform and produce the work. Soleimanpour’s methods of coy address gives me hope for methods and means of retaining some semblance of free speech, even as it’s being threatened. And I’m so grateful to Jen and Sam for their bravery, especially in context.

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Other writing that’s buoying me through this wreck is Krysten Hill’s How Her Spirit Got Out, which is finally—wait for it—out, just this week. I’m so proud of Krysten and her collection. She asks the hard questions we need to pose to ourselves and our officials right now, and gives us possible solutions for how black women, indeed any women of color, can navigate a society that makes them feel simultaneously abandoned, controlled, fetishized, and disrespected. And Krysten approaches the work from multiple angles, meaning the book is as funny as it is serious, as artful as it is frank, as much an ode as it is an instruction.  And disarming throughout. Short version: everyone should read this book.

And, rounding out AP news, the seventh print annual of apt is now available to preorder. The issue features work by Joanna Ruocco, Krysten Hill, Sonja Condit, Doug Paul Case, and Gregory Crosby. Many of these long stories and poems speak to the various ways women are discounted and downplayed, and how they counterbalance that disadvantage, which has always been important to me, but especially now.

Since it’s mid-December, this is the time when I would reflect on this past year and mention all the things we’re looking forward to next year, but while 2016 has been a year for the metaphorical books, they’re not any I’d like to read, and though I’d prefer to savor time rather than waste it, the quicker we can reverse the damage of these upcoming years, the better off we’ll be. So, here’s to next year, but more so, all the years that will follow, especially those when we rise again.

WRRR Cast Interview: Randolph Pfaff

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Just four days left until our production of White Rabbit Red Rabbit comes to OBERON! The show has been described as “a thoughtful, playful response to oppression” in The Guardian, and we’re taking that as a necessary reaction to the results of our recent election.

We’ve got one more cast member to catch up with: AP cofounder, Randolph Pfaff.

Since Randolph will be our stage manager and Emcee, the questions we asked the other cast members didn’t exactly apply, so Carissa wrote new questions for him:

 

You hold the key to this production—as stage manager, you hold the script. What does it mean to you to wield that sort of power?

I think the real power lies in the unknown for this production. There’s this energy at the intersection of the script and the experience, playfulness, and flexibility of the actors. That said, there’s great excitement in creating this surprise for the three actors. It’s like a really good gift you’ve found for someone’s birthday and the real joy isn’t in giving the gift but in watching them receive it. (Editor’s note: How fitting that there are gifts behind Randolph in his photo.)

 

When we started this project, I approached you to perform and, initially, you said yes. Then you changed your mind (and broke my heart). Will you talk a bit about those choices (and how you’ll make it up to me)?

Well, I’m clearly more suited to heartbreaker roles and since I couldn’t guarantee what sort of leading man I’d be in this show, I had to decline.

In all seriousness, there were two reservations that led me to decline: 1. I don’t perform often, though I read my work now and then. Because the only real preparation that’s possible for White Rabbit Red Rabbit is to be comfortable on stage—physically, emotionally, and creatively—I didn’t feel like I’d be able to give it the performance it deserves, and 2. In the current sociopolitical environment of our country, I couldn’t see filling one night of a three-night run with a white male performer. There are so many actors who can bring cultural and experiential context to this show that I can’t. I don’t think putting a white guy on stage by himself in Harvard Square and having him talk for 90 minutes is doing much to shift perspectives and open people up to new ideas and conversations, which are what we need now more than ever. I’m happy to listen and learn and participate rather than driving the conversation.

To answer the second part of your question, I suppose, in keeping with the spirit of the show, I’ll have to surprise you with something to make it up to you.

 

Good stage managers, like good editors, work invisibly. They do their magic and step back, and the reader/audience is none the wiser. But in this show specifically, we need your guidance. You’re the only one who knows, right now, what this show is going to be like. How are you approaching that responsibility? (And will you break up with us if we get too needy?)

I’d be a hypocrite to judge the too-needy among us, so I’m going to do whatever I can to ensure that all three of you can get up on stage and just go for it. I think the best thing I can do is to give each of you the confidence that you won’t need to rely on anyone or anything other than yourselves once you’re on stage.

 

Even though “Productions” is half of Aforementioned’s name, only a handful of people know we started out as a theatre company. How do you feel about this return to staged work?

I’m excited that we’re getting back to producing theatre by doing something really challenging. It’s an art form that has the power to entertain, engage, and educate without being overtly didactic. I think most audience members have a fluid relationship with theatre and are far more willing to take a risk by immersing themselves in a new experience. In return, playwrights and performers are able to break rules and blur boundaries because the audience has consented to a kind of openness and acceptance they might not be willing to give in other contexts.

 

If you were to talk up White Rabbit Red Rabbit to people on the street—without saying top secret, once in a lifetime, or experimental—what would you tell prospective audience members about the production?

I’d tell them that we’ve been getting too many bad surprises of late and that this show is the opposite of that. I’d say it’s a reminder that there are spaces in which we can go out on a limb without fear that the branch will break beneath us.

 

Last question: Part of the fun of performing and producing this show is the risk: the whole thing runs on potential and we won’t know what’s happening until we’re in it. As a writer and a visual artist, how does the unknown figure in your work?

This might be the perfect show for me to be a part of because I’m totally infatuated by the ways in which we approach the unknown. In my work, I’m most interested in the process of teasing out what I can’t define or articulate rather than defining and articulating it. We spend our whole lives trying to figure out who we are and how we relate to other people and how we fit into the larger world, but it’s the attempt itself that shapes who we become. We’re defined by the practice, not the conclusion, and the practice is an ongoing, loving embrace of the unknown.

 

Read about the rest of the cast at the WRRR page, and to reserve your seats for the show, head over to OBERON!

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New praise for Krysten Hill’s HOW HER SPIRIT GOT OUT!

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Krysten Hill’s incendiary debut, How Her Spirit Got Out, is on its way next month! It’s garnered praise from Jill McDonough, and now from Boston’s Poet Laureate, Danielle Legros Georges!

“Krysten Hill’s poems grab you by the throat and pull you into dark rooms and dark selves. The poems know that ‘the world is full of weapons’ and poisonous legacies that pursue and haunt us—and become knives themselves, daring to carve deep silence into sound and image, into resurrection. These poems exude at once vulnerability, rawness, and lucid beauty.”

If you haven’t pre-ordered your copy yet, there’s no time like the present!

Head over to the presale page and check out the incentives, including variant covers, original poems by Krysten, and an option to get all of AP’s chapbooks in one shot!

December 13 can’t come soon enough!