The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Mid-Year Best Best Dressed

This week, Managing Editor Merrick Sloane shares a new selection from each of their 5 favorite books featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed so far this year.

Merrick’s second selection for the mid-year best of 2026 is from Wolves in Shells by Kimberly Ann Priest (The University of Nebraska Press 2025).

Protections

Against the whir of my treadmill
     a shot rings out

and a wolf is gunned down—O-Six,
     they named her,

numinous alpha female
     of Yellowstone National Park

because she survived
     solo.

Even the commentator says
     this was unusual

and dangerous; yet she was beloved
     for acuity

and beauty, face like an owl mask against
     snow white.

I listen as the hunter celebrates
     his kill, the documentary

rolling. My treadmill
     rolling.

They had lifted the ban on hunting
     wolves that year—

endangered status just long enough
     for a female

to become her own pack, survive, surpass
     the males of her kind.

Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a writer and visual artist whose book Wolves in Shells won the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press. She is the author of four full-length books of poetry and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, and Birmingham Poetry Review.

Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. A 2026 Best of the Net and 2025 AWP Intro Journal Awards winner, Merrick’s poetry appears in citizen trans* {project}, Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Fruitslice, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.