The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all by Melanie Brooks

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all by Melanie Brooks (Vine Leaves Press, 2023).

                              The Ryan White Story,
                                       and Mine

   A  made-for-TV  movie  had a happy ending.  Ryan’s  family moved to
a new  community  where  they  found  acceptance  and  tolerance.  The
final scene showed Ryan  arriving  at  his  new  high school. With news-
paper photographers’ cameras flashing,  the  principal shook his  hand,
saying, “We’re happy to have you.” He led Ryan to  a crowd of students
who  walked  him  toward  the  school  building. Hope  broke across his
mother’s  face as she  watched. Waving and smiling, she  drove away to
the catchy beat of Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.”
   I  turned  off  the  TV  then  and  stared into the empty screen. A fresh
dread squeezed my insides. I knew Ryan’s story was not over.
   The dying part just hadn’t happened yet.
   At home, I climbed  into bed, curled into a ball,  my knees once  again
hugged  to  my chest,  and burrowed beneath my duvet. I  couldn’t  stop


thinking  about what I’d watched. All these  things  didn’t  feel  like  they
were  supposed  to  belong  in   my  world: the  terrible  accusations  and
assumptions  about  how  Ryan  had contracted  HIV;  hatred from both
strangers  and  people  who’d   known  him  his  whole  life;  people  who
treated him like the disease was his fault.  His  family  lost  their privacy
and with it, security—something they’d  always  taken  for  granted.  But
the worst were  the  moments  when  Ryan  was  so  sick he  couldn’t  lift
his  head  from the  edge of the toilet  seat. Hidden under my covers, the
boding  presence  I’d  felt with me  ever since we moved  from  Moncton
seemed  so much  bigger.  A  pressing  question  hammered  against  my
skull: What’s next? What’s next? What’s next?
   This question hung on my tongue  the  next morning in the car on our
way  to  school.  I  glanced  at  Mom. Her  short brown permed hair was
still a bit damp from her shower, and  the mousse-crusted curls needed
to be brushed out. Her face was smooth, even without makeup.
   She steered the car down Abbeyhill  Drive, approaching the  entrance
to the school. I  drew in a shaky breath,  held  it,  and  then  blurted, “Is
Dad going to die?” It came out as a  question, but I was not  asking. The
answer had been there all along. I just needed to hear it.
   The car slowed. Surprise registered on  Mom’s  face. She  opened  her
mouth to speak and then closed it. Her lips pressed together.  My  ques-
tion was a cavern between us.
   “Mel,” she began, and I could already sense in  her tone  that  she  was
about to downplay, deflect, or reassure, the same way  she  downplayed,
deflected,  or  reassured anytime I got  brave  enough  to  ask  questions
about Dad’s illness.
   “Just tell me.” My voice was  steady,  but  the  plea  behind  the  words
made it sharp.
   We approached the school. Cars crowded the  rectangular parking  lot
out front, and students stood in clusters on  the  snow-packed  sidewalk
by  the   main  entrance,  backpacks  tossed  over  their  shoulders,  their
coats pulled close  against the cold.  Near  the  glass  doors  leading  into
the school, I  saw  my  friends:  Penny, John, Russell, Sunita.  They were
waiting for me before heading inside.


   “Tell me,” I said again, this time less steady, as Mom pulled up against
the  curb  and  turned  in  her  seat  toward  me.“ Is Dad going  to die?” I
turned too and faced her directly. My eyes locked on hers.
   She  gripped  the  steering wheel with her  gloved hands and  inhaled a
measured  breath. Then,  speaking  in  a  defeated  voice I’d never heard
before, she said, “Yes.”
   The single  word  ripped   through  the  protective  blanket   that  she’d
wrapped  around  me  for  the  last  four  years. It tracked into my mind,
sinking like a stone to the ocean floor, where it settled for good.
   “Okay.”  I  stretched  for  my  backpack  on  the floor  and clutched  the
door handle. “Okay,” I said again. I  pushed  the door open and  climbed
out  into the  frigid  air, welcoming it into my lungs. I walked toward my
friends,  plastered a  smile on my face, and  shoved everything else back
down.
   Just  before  I  entered  the school, I looked  back  toward  the  car and
lifted my  hand to wave. Mom  still gripped  the  wheel, her gaze trained
on  me. She  waved  back  and tried to smile, but tears traced lines down
her cheeks. She put the car into gear and drove away.

Melanie Brooks (she/her) is the author of A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vines Leaves Press 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press 2017). She teaches creative nonfiction and narrative medicine in the MFA program at Bay Path University. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She’s had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from illness, loss, and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Toronto Globe and Mail, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, Psychology Today, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in NH with my husband, two kids (when they are home from university), and chocolate Lab.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. 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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all by Melanie Brooks

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all by Melanie Brooks (Vine Leaves Press, 2023).

                                        Prologue

   Four days earlier, Randy died  from  complications  related to AIDS
after  a  period  of prolonged illness. In the final two  years of  his  life,
Randy’s had become one of  the most recognizable faces of a  national
tragedy: Canada’s  tainted   blood  scandal.  Between  1980  and  1985,
close to two thousand Canadians, most  from  within  the  hemophiliac
community, were infected with  HIV from  contaminated  blood. More
than  seven  hundred   have  since  died. A  person  with  severe  hemo-
philia, Conners had contracted HIV sometime in the early 1980s  from
Factor 8, a government approved blood-clotting product  derived from
donated  human  blood plasma.  He’d  learned of his infection  in 1987.
Despite   Randy’s  doctors’  repeated  assurances  that  there  was  little
chance he could infect his  wife, the couple learned in 1989  that  Janet
was also HIV-positive.
   The  Conners’s  heartbreak  encapsulates  what  has  been  character-
ized as Canada’s “worst-ever” public health disaster. Despite mounting
evidence that infected blood products were known  to  be  transmitting
HIV, administrators of Canada’s blood supply  were slow to implement
adequate measures to  protect  the  public.  Appalling  mismanagement
by the Canadian Red  Cross  and  its  regulators and systemic corporate
greed by blood-product manufacturers and distributors showed blatant
disregard for  public safety and allowed infected  blood to be knowingly
distributed  nationwide. The tragedy  is the result of a complicated web
of  action  and  inaction  by the  parties involved, whose biggest failures
included  a  lack  of  proper  screening  to  eliminate   high  risk  donors,
unnecessary  delays   in  implementing  available  screening methods of
the  blood  products for HIV, and  fateful  decisions  to  save  money  by
using up inventory of suspected contaminated products.

Melanie Brooks (she/her) is the author of A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vines Leaves Press 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press 2017). She teaches creative nonfiction and narrative medicine in the MFA program at Bay Path University. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She’s had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from illness, loss, and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Toronto Globe and Mail, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, Psychology Today, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in NH with my husband, two kids (when they are home from university), and chocolate Lab.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. 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.


Sundress Reads: Review of Incidental Pollen

Ellen Austin-Li, in her latest collection, Incidental Pollen (Madville Publishing, 2025), delivers an emotionally rich collection of poems devoted to the tensions between grief, trauma, and memory. With dazzling metaphors and an acute sense of imagery, Austin-Li asserts herself as a poetic prowess capable of tackling complex poetic forms while navigating dual timelines and narratives encompassing a lifetime. Runner up for the 2023 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize, this collection anchors itself to what we all long to confront: familial love and reckoning with pain.

Incidental Pollen is full of ripe metaphors that contribute to an overarching narrative of trauma. Bees (alluding to the title and titular poem) resurface again and again, each time emphasizing a different part of the extended metaphor. For example, the hive is reiterated in “Robber Bees:” “dead bodies were piled beside the hive—worse, they had stolen the honey. All that was sweet—gone” (58). Honey is stressed in “The Black Velvet Heels:” 

“Stockings I peeled off at night— 

the seduction. Bees swarming 

my honey. And I could dance 

in them. Oh, I could dance” (25).

Austin-Li has picked a perfect metaphor to use as scaffolding for the collection. She draws upon its domain generously, referring to the queen bee, the honey, the hive, and destruction.

The poetic form is brave in this collection. “Rendezvous at Round Lake” is a pantoum, wherein the second and fourth lines of the first stanza become the first and third of the next. This pattern is used strategically to call attention to the danger inherent in nature. The repetitions of lines like “I call my friend of gold” and “we are carved ancient as a glacier” emphasize memory and time, another dual-theme of the collection (36). Several palindrome poems are included as well, such as “Loss Palindrome” (45)  and “Portrait in Green” (5). A singular prose poem, “Reunion,” clarifies Austin-Li’s narrative on page 52, where the speaker longs for the deceased. This prose poem is greatly awaited, and gives readers concrete details, without any of the ambiguity that often comes with more abstract free verse poems. Austin-Li’s grappling with grief is sharp and poignant here. Additionally, “Undertakers” employs repeating rhyming refrains that allow the poem to transcend into a hypnotic calling rather than just a poem: “The bodies of the dead are carried… / laid away from the hive, unburied” (59). The rhyming of “carried” and “unburied” highlights death and refocuses the poem, undoubtedly, on grief.

Austin-Li allows herself to indulge in micro-themed poems as well. These were my favorites. In “Hidden,” she pulls from a lexicon of neurobiology to illustrate the potency of closeness:

“I know if I pulled too close

you would use your ink to hide

yourself in a cloud and jet away.” (35)

She uses words like “limbic borders” and “synapses” to contort language towards the unfamiliar. The narrator speaks of an octopus in an aquarium here, seemingly a random component of the poem, but nevertheless, Austin-Li is able to weave this language into the rest of the collection.

This most heartbreaking and original element of this collection is its narrative. The speaker has lost not only her father but her sister’s son. In a series of poems, grief and memory become omnipotent themes as it relates to their deaths. “Mountain Song (for My Nephew),” for example, calls for memory to imprint itself on time: “The poem I must write to fix you on the page” (55). The loss of both Austin-Li’s nephew and father linger in nearly every poem within the second section of the collection. She grappled with memory’s uncertainty in preserving the dead. 

Although the collection is tethered to themes of memory, trauma, and grief most, other themes emerge as well. Austin-Li centers fertility in “If a Woman’s Eggs Had No Expiration Date.” She traverses the globe, from Ohio to Boston to Ireland, allowing for travel to emerge as a subtle motif. Lastly, Austin-Li engages with politics in “Smoke” by discussing America’s current political climate and alluding to systemic racism. There is truly a little bit of everything in this collection.

What Austin-Li does best is offer hope. She provides the notion that “There is no memory, only instinct,” allowing readers to console themselves with the knowledge that memory will be enough. The dead have no choice but to carry on within us (64). I was most struck by one of the penultimate poems, “To Recapture Faith,” in which Austin-Li concludes: “Radiance seems a relic of my imagination,  / show me again, owl, how to catch / the glimmer in the underbrush” (75). I found myself returning again and again to this line after finishing the collection, as that is exactly what Austin-Li does. Offers readers a way in reach to reach the glimmer in the underbrush.

Incidental Pollen is available from Madville Publishing

Emma Goss is a senior English major with minors in Film and Linguistic Anthropology. A passionate reader, she prefers to always be juggling a poetry collection, a literary fiction novel, and an audiobook. Emma is especially drawn to poetry rooted in nature symbolism and metaphor. Some of her favorite collections include The Tradition by Jericho Brown, War of the Foxes by Richard Siken, What the Living Do by Marie Howe, and Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson. Her poetry has been published in Pangyrus Magazine and by the Princeton Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Poetry Contest. Originally from Los Angeles, she spends her time hiking local trails or browsing the poetry shelves at Barnes & Noble Studio City when not at Vassar.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all by Melanie Brooks

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all by Melanie Brooks (Vine Leaves Press, 2023).

                                         Prologue

A  little  over  a  year  before    his  own,   my   father  attends  a   funeral.
It’s  Saturday,  September   17,  1994.  Somewhere  inside the  expansive
Cathedral  Church  of  All  Saints  in   the  South  End  of  Halifax,   Nova
Scotia,  he sits,  deliberately  beyond the reach of any  camera lens there
to  capture  the  sea  of  recognizable  faces of  the  over 600  mourners—
including local  and  national  community leaders,  news  reporters,  and
a  handful  of  provincial  politicians. Tension rides the lines of  his  body
as  he  hunches  low  in  the wooden  pew and grips my  mom’s hand  for
support.  He  wears his dark tailored suit, crisp white shirt, and satin tie,
handsome  and  robust despite concerted  efforts to make himself  small.
No visible  physical   signs  yet forecast that in fifteen  months,  when his
lungs  are  ravaged  by   pneumocystis  pneumonia   (PCP) and  his  body
emaciated  by  other  unidentified   opportunistic  infections, he  will die.
   White-robed   choir  members  and  participating    officiants  with  red
ribbons pinned at their hearts process down the long aisle of the narrow
sanctuary to the front chancel,  and  the resonant timbre of  the church’s
pipe  organ  fills  the  space  with  the  rich notes  of the  Anglican  hymn,
“Alleluia! Sing to  Jesus.” Beneath the  gothic architecture—ornate wood
carvings,  towering  arches, and vaulted ceilings—the wooden  pews  and
additional  blue  folding  chairs are  packed with the family,  friends, and
followers   of  thirty-eight-year-old  Randy  Conners.  In   the  front   row,
Randy’s   widow,  Janet,  dressed  in  a  long  black  gold-buttoned  jacket
over  simple   black  slacks,  leans  her  slim  frame  against her fourteen-
year-old son  as she dabs her tear-filled eyes with the tissue she  clutches
in her fist.

Melanie Brooks (she/her) is the author of A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vines Leaves Press 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press 2017). She teaches creative nonfiction and narrative medicine in the MFA program at Bay Path University. She holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She’s had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from illness, loss, and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Toronto Globe and Mail, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, Psychology Today, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in NH with my husband, two kids (when they are home from university), and chocolate Lab.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. 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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Northwestern University Press, 2025).

       
       
      At Love’s Truck Stop, Laramie, WY

Above gas pumps, the sky nurses

a cheek purpled by rain as the dirt

road snakes into prairie, and now

a swallow, I graze each fence post,

prong of barbed wire, bless it with

a sharp wing. Matthew, it’s spring,

the season farthest from your death

along this road, like any other, yet

here you are, drawing wildflowers

about shoulders like a cape when

my wife, having braved the ladies’

room, emerges unscathed again as

a trucker leans on his horn, turns

onto the freeway, headed home.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. 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.


Sundress Reads: Review of
The Watch: Time to Witness the Beauty of It All

Sundress Reads logo, which shows a sheep reading, with glasses on and a book. Logo is black and white.
Cover of the book The Watch, showing a clock in clouds

An introspective memoir about loss and life, The Watch: Time to Witness the Beauty of It All (Wildhouse Publications, 2025) by Paula Sager is a healing walk through the process of being present while a loved one passes away. The Watch is part diary and part philosophy, the author using her strong mind-body connection as a teacher of the Alexander Technique to feel her way through what her soul is undergoing. Collecting many quotes from various authors, philosophers, and family members, Paula Sager offers that our emotions can be processed through the Discipline of Authentic Movement, and that it’s possible to stay mentally present even in the most difficult of times. Trigger warning: If you’ve had a loved one pass away or expect someone to pass soon, this can be a healing, but also at times difficult read. Please give yourself time and private space to process thoughts and emotions while paddling through this book.

While reading The Watch, I felt like I traveled back in time to when my grandparents were completing their life cycles, only this time, I felt more present in my memories. If you’ve had a loved one die slowly of cancer or other medical issues, this book will deeply resonate with you. Sager’s writing captures daily life, the little and big tasks that continue to need doing, while also showing how she stays present and tries to enjoy every moment she can before there are no more moments. One quote from Sager’s father, Bob, continues to float in my mind:

  “These are the waves of yesterday’s wind.” (Sager 53)

This small sentence encapsulates what it feels like after realizing that someone you’re close to has little time left. You’re propelled forward by the waves from yesterday’s wind that blew your life onto a new path that will soon depart from the path of your loved one. Dwelling on the circle of life and her family members that are still in the beginning or middle of the life cycle helps Sager through the process. She writes of her brothers and her children, as well as how their pasts and futures seem to mirror not only her own, but her passing father’s. The watch, which began mysteriously falling apart after Sager’s father died, appears recurrently as a reminder of time, both precious and fleeting. When Sager trades watches with her father, it’s as if she’s giving him the best gift she can: more time with her and love.

Despite life’s limitations, a sense of calmness and acceptance imbues the book. The way Sager bares her raw emotions for the reader and conveys a calmness is rather wonderous. Some of her conversations with her father are true gems. For example, Sager’s father Bob says at one point, still a bit hazy from anesthesia:

  “I want to tell you about something I dreamed … First there was the dream of death
   … And it was fine! … And then there was the dream of birth—and it was spectacular!
   … They really have it figured out. It all makes sense, and there is nothing to worry
   about.” (Sager 65)

It’s hard to accept death, even though we know it’s coming. The most amazing takeaway for me personally from The Watch is a new sense that I might finally be able to let go of fear of the unknown. Somehow, through reading about Sager’s life, her peaceful moments, her father’s insights, she has talked me free of fear of the unknown. One of her and her family’s extraordinary abilities seems to be to take life in stride. Although there are certainly tough time periods, overall, Sager enjoys the last moments with her father and calmly accepts her experiences, letting fear depart as well.

Kayaking Watercolor by Everly Arts, showing a kayaker paddling on the water towards a sunset between two mountains
Kayaking Watercolor by Everly Arts

Sager’s father loved to kayak, and the family ultimately return him to the water he loved in a unique kayak flotilla funeral. This poem Sager quotes is quite fitting:

“Wave of sorrow,
Do not drown me now:
I see the island
Still ahead somehow.

I see the island
And its sands are fair:
Wave of sorrow,
Take me there.”
(Sager 51, quoting “Island” by Langston Hughes)

Sager takes readers there, showing us the beauty of our lives that remain after loss and the love of memories we will have forever. She also touches on some intriguing supernatural experiences she has had surrounding her father and his passing period, such as feeling pain at the same time as him, a swan flying up to the family that seems to embody some presence of her father’s, the watch falling apart after he died, and unusual mind-body connections she experiences through Janet Adler’s Discipline of Authentic Movement.

I recommend this book for readers that are of the “middle generation,” that have both children as well as parents in their lives. I would also like to recommend the following tea pairing with this book: Tulsi & Ginger Tea from Traditional Medicinals. This tea provides calming stress relief and warming ginger to heal your body and soul.

The Watch: Time to Witness the Beauty of It All is available from Wildhouse Publications

Ana Mourant sitting on grass reading a book. She has light skin and blonde hair, has a sunflower in her hair, and is wearing a green sundress.

Ana Mourant (she/her) is an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s editing program. She holds a Certificate in Editing as well as a Certificate in Storytelling and Content Strategy, and a BA in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. Ana conducts manuscript evaluations, edits, and proofreads, as well as provides authenticity and sensitivity readings for Indigenous Peoples content. Ana loves nature writing and Indigenous cultures, and, when she’s not working, is often out in the wilderness tracking animals, Nordic skiing, or just enjoying nature.

Project Bookshelf: Penny Wei

Growing up in Shanghai, China, my bookshelf options were not necessarily the most diverse or international. They often consisted of translated fairytales, heavy Chinese classics, or occasional graphic novels or comics like Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Dog Man. Hence, I was never a big reader since youth—I often indulged myself with movies instead. I found most books too pedantic and too sophisticated to read. So, for a long time I didn’t love books that much, and my bookshelf was oftentimes covered in substandard blindbox dolls or yearbooks.

A big turning point in my life when it came to books was when my dad came back from a work trip in Australia. I remembered him carrying two gigantic suitcases almost twice my height and rolling them in front of me. Inside were oceans of books—from classics to children’s books, from novels to poetry. To this day, I still want to thank my dad for his efforts that led me to become a literary arts lover—because the change from a life without to a life with a diverse range of books is tremendous. I came to love the process of exploration, in which I learn the heart of another author through excavating their world creations and character sensitivities. I especially adored the aspect of excessive thinking, where a character vomits their brains out and I get to trace my finger across the convex folds until I could almost call it mine.

A lot of books have been important to me in my lifetime, both for my writing career and personal growth. The fourth grade me has written endless reimaginings of the Harry Potter series and poems have thrived on my reincarnation in Jane Eyre’s body. But my favorite books would have to be those by Amy Tan.

Diaspora and heritage is not an uncommon theme in literature. Fifth grade summer, I was handed The Joy Luck Club, a book named after a Mahjong parlor that did not make much rhythmic sense until translated to its original counterpart—喜福会; “喜”, whose meaning stretched beyond joy and “福”, whose interpretations stretched beyond luck. And yet here I was—criss-crossed and reading the Mahjong tiles clatter, bone on bone, as four women shuffle latent histories between eight palms, grasping luck that nearly slipped through the cracks. Upon my first read I was shocked by a few things: one, that words can sound as intimate as sweet-sour meat loafs served between the voices of mothers whispering across a dinner table, brimming with an accent I had always heard but never before seen in ink; two, that daughters could wade through language like a river with two shores, caught between the currents of Mandarin’s lyricism and English’s sharp edges; three, that a character in an English book could be named in Chinese, pinyin above alphabet. After this book, I read more of Amy Tan, ranging from The Kitchen’s Godwife to The Moon Lady.

Maybe enough of her books, but you probably can kind of tell that they’re impactful. Beyond Amy Tan, I also read a lot of historical fiction, my favourites being the classic All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, The Marriage Portrait, Pachinko and many, many more.

As I began to write poetry, I’ve also been interested in poetry-prose or prose-poetry, or basically just anything that wavers in the lines of obscurity and clear plot progressions. I still love On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, as popular as it may already be.

Now with a relatively packed day to day schedule, finding the time to read immersively is hard, and oftentimes I would resort to reading online lit mags or e-books instead of physical copies (something I feel guilty about since I love the smell of fresh ink). But I do try. Another interesting fact about me is that I love aesthetic covers and pretty titles, and often tend to buy books just for the sake of their beauty. So yes, I do judge a book by its cover. I am currently not in Shanghai so I don’t have pictures of my big, old bookshelf, but I can promise you that it is packed and very, very aesthetic.

Girl with dress sitting in a car.

Penny Wei is from Shanghai and Massachusetts. She has been recognized by the Longfellow House, Cafe Muse, and The National Poetry Quarterly, amongst others. Her works are up or forthcoming on Eunoia Review, Inflectionist Review, Dialogist, Aloka and elsewhere.

Project Bookshelf: Caylin Moore

There are many genres represented on my bookshelf, but I find that a few things are true across the board. I gravitate toward books that I relate to in some way and that address issues I care about. I primarily read fiction as I often find that it conveys its message in a more moving way than nonfiction. Below I have listed some of the fictional works that have resonated with me throughout the years.

Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons

I personally love a great feminist retelling. I am also a theatre kid at heart, so the works of Shakespeare are favorites of mine. I love Romeo and Juliet so much that I have a line from it tattooed on my arm. However, a fresh perspective on a story I love is right up my alley. This book centers on Rosaline, the girl Romeo left to pursue Juliet.

Icebreaker by Hannah Grace

This book was wildly popular for a reason. It rekindled my love of reading for the first time in my adult life. When I was burned out by academic reading after finishing my undergraduate degree, a cheesy romance is what got me out of my reading slump. I’ve grown to love romances, and they make up a majority of what I read. My fiancé and I have even created a fun game that we play when we are walking through a store’s book section together. He reads blurbs on romance books and tries to pick out ones he thinks I will like. He’s gotten quite good at this game. Although he is not much of a reader himself, talking about my favorite romances has become a particularly sweet part of our own romance.

How to Survive Your Murder by Danielle Valentine

I believe we are intrigued by horror because it gives us the opportunity to work through our greatest fears without actually putting ourselves in physical danger. I would classify this book as a slasher. In my opinion, this is the scariest type of horror because it is the most likely to actually occur in real life. I have gifted my physical copy to a friend, but this is one of the best murder mysteries I’ve read. I love trying to figure out who the killer is, and this book kept me guessing until the page before the big reveal. I recommend it to people often.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

This book fundamentally shaped me in my high school years. It centers on a young girl who is struggling with an eating disorder while grieving her best friend’s death. It was instrumental in giving me the motivation to start my own eating disorder recovery. While I would suggest being cautious of potential triggers due to the novel’s graphic nature, I would highly recommend it to anyone who either has dealt with or known someone with an eating disorder. My copy is currently in storage, but I thought it was worthy of being included on this list. I still think of it often.

Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

I return to this graphic novel series fairly often because it fills me with pure joy. I did not realize that I am bisexual until my early twenties, but it is so comforting to read about the kind of wholesome queer teenage experiences I didn’t have. In a way, it feels like connecting my current self with the younger version of myself who did not yet know she was queer.

Caylin Moore (she/her) is currently pursuing a graduate level certificate in book publishing from Pace University, and SAFTA is her first internship in the publishing industry. Her previous work includes copyediting, social media marketing, and project management. She hopes to use these skills and those gained during this internship for a job in either editorial or marketing one day. As someone who has often felt seen by the stories she reads, she is passionate about bringing stories into the world that help others feel that same comfort. She is planning her wedding to Nathan, the love of her life, for next August. In addition to her fiancé, she also loves romance novels, murder mysteries, musical theatre, and her pets Stitch and Oreo. Stitch is a hound dog named after objectively the best Disney character of all time, and she will hear no debate on that matter.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Northwestern University Press, 2025).

       
       It’s Easier These Days

At least, in our apartment.
Outside, maybe not. Seems
men can’t stand what won’t
come when called, snarl as
pace quickens. Sure, clubs
are no longer raided, red

light urging, Hurry—switch
partners. And we can make
yearly pilgrimages to towns
that spawned us, avoiding
truck-stop bathrooms along
the way. But it’s provisional

grace, mouths fags once we
clear the porch. And those
who guilt, Come home, never
saw that slip of sand where,
naked except fog, we swim
under a rusty Golden bow.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. 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.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett

This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from Mud in Our Mouths by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett (Northwestern University Press, 2025).

         In the Produce Section of
         Super Walmart, Union City, TN

No parsley, broccolini, or scallions,

but a plethora of camo—woodland,

real tree, mossy oak, the rare desert—

so I fill my cart with anything fresh,

head to a checkout where they sell

Marlboro Lights for your mom. And

you wait in the car—between a van

emblazoned with a country that wages

war on its police must make peace

with its criminals and a motorcycle

flying the Betsy Ross—as I unload

a wilted garden onto the belt behind

jerky and cartons and, beyond glass

doors, see the child you were—curls

crushed under a cap, slumped down

in the seat. Barely here. Almost gone.

Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter.


Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, Puerto del Sol, ANMLY, Fruitslice, among others. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. 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.