Sara Moore Wagner, Pauletta Hansel & Caylin Capra-Thomas discussing and signing Swan Wife, Heartbreak Tree, & Iguana Iguana

Saturday, August 13, 2022 - 2:00pm
2692 Madison Rd
Cincinnati, OH 45208

Sara Moore Wagner, Pauletta Hansel & Caylin Capra-Thomas discussing and signing Swan Wife, Heartbreak Tree, & Iguana Iguana

Saturday, August 13 at 2pm ET

Location: Joseph-Beth Rookwood 

Join us for Sara Moore Wagner, Pauletta Hansel and Caylin Capra-Thomas discussing and signing Swan Wife, Heartbreak Tree, & Iguana, Iguana

 

Swan Wife

Swan Wife is a lyric collection of poems about the radical transformation that can happen in the first year of marriage. It hinges on an obsession with tropes and stereotypes about what a wife is or should be, and the narrative arc is loosely based on fairy tales in which a swan or crane or seal has their animal skin stolen and is wed. It's organized in the Joseph Campbell hero’s cycle, a form traditionally reserved for men. This collection also explores cliché’s like "ball and chain," “getting your body back;” and historical and mythological women and archetypes throughout history—from Penelope to Anastasia Romanov. The Swan Wife seeks to define herself within this “tradition,” which is a shared cultural ideology going back thousands of years—with all its baggage and stereotypes, in order to preserve the self.

Sara Moore Wagner is the author of two full length books of poetry, Swan Wife (winner of the 2021 Cider Press Review Editors Prize) and Hillbilly Madonna (2020 Driftwood Press Manuscript prize winner), a recipient of a 2022 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. She is the author of the chapbooks Tumbling After and Hooked Through. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Sixth Finch, Waxwing, Nimrod, Western Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, and The Cincinnati Review, among others, and she has been nominated for multiple times for a Pushcart prize, for Best of the Net, and for Best New Poets. Her poetry has also been supported by a SAFTA residency, a merit scholarship from the Juniper Institute, and a scholarship to the Palm Beach Poetry Festival as a finalist for the Thomas Lux prize. She holds a BFA from BGSU, and an MA in literature from NKU.

 

Heartbreak Tree

Heartbreak Tree is a poetic exploration of the intersection of gender and place in Appalachia. “There is a road, but the road is still inside you,” the mature Hansel tells the girl she was, encouraging her: “You are trying. Remember.” This book does the work of that remembering, honoring the responsibility of the poet to speak the forbidden stories of her own and other women’s lives.

Pauletta Hansel is the 2022 Writer-in-Residence for the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. She served as the first Poet Laureate of Cincinnati from April 2016 through March 2018. Pauletta is author of nine poetry collections including Heartbreak Tree, a poetic exploration of the intersection of gender and place in Appalachia.

 

Iguana Iguana

Alive to the beauty and anxiety of new worlds and people, Iguana Iguana imagines a tough and tender soundtrack for tumbleweeds in search of roots. Recursive, deliberate, and as adaptive as their titular lizard, these poems invite us to listen so as to better hear “...the sweet shriek / of those far-off trains you suspect are coming / to claim you. To lay open the hills you haven’t seen.” Caylin Capra-Thomas writes towards understanding the strangers we meet and knowing the stranger within. In doing so, she maps a blueprint for "lay[ing] into the world / like it's good enough".

Caylin Capra-Thomas is the author of Iguana Iguana, as well as two chapbooks: Inside My Electric City and The Marilyn Letters. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including New England Review, 32 Poems, Pleiades, The Journal, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere.  She is the winner of Harpur Palate‘s Milton Kessler Memorial Prize, Raleigh Review’s 2019 Laux/Millar Prize, Fairy Tale Review‘s 2018 Poetry Award, The Baltimore Review‘s 2017 Summer Contest and Yemassee’s 2016 Nonfiction Prize. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from The Vermont Studio Center and The Studios of Key West, she served as the 2018-2020 poet-in-residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy and is now living in Columbia, MO, where she is a student in the University of Missouri’s PhD in English program, studying poetry and nonfiction.

 

Heartbreak Tree: Poems By Pauletta Hansel Cover Image
$20.34
ISBN: 9781948692885
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Madville Publishing - March 17th, 2022

Iguana Iguana By Caylin Capra-Thomas Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781646051779
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Deep Vellum Publishing - July 26th, 2022