Sundress Reads: Review of Bargaining with the Fall

While I read Alison Palmer’s Bargaining with the Fall (Broadstone Books, 2023) in my college’s library, I was trying hard to blink away tears. As someone all too familiar with grappling with the grief that surfaces when a loved one passes away, this collection was a punch to the gut (in the best way possible). In her collection, Palmer showcases how grief seeps into every aspect of life, even affecting the speaker’s dog whose “been throwing up for days” (6). The speaker recalls intimate details about the subject of these poems; the remnants of this person once overlooked while they were still alive now hold more weight. Images such as a dandruff-filled brush, moth-receipts, and “those things you stab between your teeth” (27) paint an intimate portrait of the “you” of this collection, making me as a reader feel connected. 

Palmer cleverly employs images to convey the depth of grief. In “If Part of Woven Sun,” Palmer uses language to create a visual for how long one’s life is. She writes, 

“Force me to listen to you

closely, to consider your shortened thread

of life with a measuring rod” (4). 

The physicality of this image makes it so haunting and heartbreaking. The concept of measuring someone’s life—something so precious—with a measuring rod, lingers with me. I think about my childhood friend who passed away at eighteen, how short her measuring rod would be. This line also speaks to the heart wrenching fact that some people are remembered not for their life, but for their death. How sometimes we fail to remember what a late friend or family member laughed at, what their favorite song was, what food makes us think of them. Instead, we focus on the details of their ending: where they ended, how old they were, how it happened. 

In “Your Shadow, At First Meaning Me,” I was moved by how evocative and striking the language was, as well as how the speaker aims to reimagine death as something that shouldn’t be experienced in isolation from others. The poem powerfully begins with the line: “Finality should be shared, shouldn’t it” (5). Palmer ends this first line with a period, instead of a question mark, signifying that this isn’t a question the speaker is asking for reassurance, it’s a statement they are telling the reader. When I encountered this line, I thought of “finality” as referring to death, the end of something or someone. I interpreted this line in two ways: death should be shared, and, grief should not be experienced alone. Later on in the poem, the speaker goes on to “Re-imagine our first cries; they sound almost like the last” (5). Here the speaker suggests that there is little difference between someone’s first laugh as a newborn and someone’s last laugh, later in life as an adult. The speaker poses the notion that birth and death really aren’t that different from each other. The use of “our” here suggests a collective birth and death. Perhaps the speaker is reimagining or rewriting this person’s death to cope, wondering what if they had died together so this person didn’t have to experience death alone. 

Palmer doesn’t shy away from honesty throughout  Bargaining with the Fall, even in the speaker’s most vulnerable moments. In “The Falling Bargain,” the speaker asks, “I repeat you / mid-panic / over and over; which moment is best to save you?” (42). This line perfectly encapsulates the feeling of guilt that arises after a loved one has passed away, when you can’t help but look at yourself in the mirror and wonder if you could go back in time, if there was anything you could have done to save them. I found comfort in reading these words; they made me feel less alone in my own feelings of guilt surrounding the death of a loved one. In the following poem “Don’t Wait Until the Bitter End,” the speaker confesses, “I want / to keep the succulents alive, to prove I can” (43). This line tackles the experience of wanting to prove to others, and maybe even to yourself, that you’re still capable of living even amidst the grief. That you’re still able to go on with life, to live in this world, without this person you love in it. 

Palmer doesn’t dance around feelings, doesn’t care to make grief palatable and sugarcoated. Palmer ends the poem “Answer Me” with the line, “Sometimes, being lonely means lulling / into the safety of it” (11). There is so much loneliness in grief. Almost four years after a personal loss of my own, reading this collection made me feel seen in my grief that still lingers. When I found out about the death of my childhood friend from my mother, I couldn’t get out of bed for days. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I had to live in a world without her in it, didn’t understand why I deserved to live but she didn’t. I wish I had Bargaining with the Fall back in 2020, when I was coping, but I’m glad I have these poems today. Better late than never.

Bargaining with the Fall can be found at Broadstone Books

Annalisa Hansford (they/them) studies Creative Writing at Emerson College. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in The West Review, The Lumiere Review, and Heavy Feather Review. They are the co-editor-in-chief of hand picked poetry, a poetry editor for The Emerson Review and Hominum Journal, and a reader for Sundress Publications.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Burn by Sara Henning

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Burn by Sara Henning (Southern Illinois University Press 2024).

The First Years

Locals call it the gates of hell, crater
in the Turkmenistan desert burning

forty years. The longest-burning fire began
six thousand years ago—an Australian

coal seam in New South Wales ignited by lightning,
smiting the biome into barren trails.

But I always come back to the coal seam
blazing under Centralia, Pennsylvania,

where a trash fire plumed against veins of earth.
Since then, it razors through mines, sixty years

feeding on bituminous coal. This is us,
love, hitched at our flash points, flaming head of us

lit incandescent. We are soot torching
ultraviolet, photon emissions burst

from atoms. We wear each other’s infrared bands.
In outer space, any flame turns to blue sphere.

But here, our first year, we radiated white.
Rages birthed divorce threats, smelted into sex.

Now, we are flameless combustion, licked flint,
divine red. Love exists in spite of us.

Sara Henning (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.


Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Burn by Sara Henning

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Burn by Sara Henning (Southern Illinois University Press 2024).

A Brief History of Skin

In the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the loverly stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Return it, the moles constellating my right shoulder,
deep brown poultice. My husband once kissed
his way into its world. Bless it, biopsy knife

swiping through my flesh, my faith Unname it
Nevus spilus, little Andromeda galaxy stretching my skin,
its infinite halo of dark matter. Unwhisper the word

melanoma, those sleepless weeks I swore
it glimmered, debris from an exploded star.
Unclench my hand from its jigger of vodka,

uncurl my husband’s touch from my shoulder.
Unwhisper the words cancer, mother.
Unburden my skin from the blazing Utah May,

where, one spring, the sun ravaged me.
Untangle me from recklessness, untruss
the tumors from my mother’s blood.

Return her record player’s needle shirring
through scarred vinyl, Mick Jagger throating
blues through her house on Victory Drive.

Rebridle her hair to its messy knot,
unveil the dime-sized mole on the back of her neck.
Give them back, my father’s words for it—

forget-me-not of the angels, plush field of stars.
Give her back her body when she still loved
my father, when I still moved within her.

But if you can give me nothing, God,
return her name for me—little one,
infinite meadow of heaven.

Sara Henning (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.


Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Burn by Sara Henning

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Burn by Sara Henning (Southern Illinois University Press 2024).

Letter in the Shape of a Banyan Tree

I always felt like a bird blown through the world.
I never felt like a tree.
—Mary Swenson, “Stripping and Putting On”

A year before my birth, Mother, you wished for a son to grow inside you. You’d
               call him
banyan tree, strangler fig, boy strong as my father. When I came, you knew
a chickadee starving for love could carry no legacy. Call me
daughter who names creatures of the night like firstborns, daughter persuaded
everything she loved could kill her—possums hissing, their luminous, naked tails.
For consolation, you dressed me in pink, tried to make me your perfect
girl. But I was a tomboy, skinned knees and tangled
hair. Mornings, you’d smoke while braiding me, smooth elastic,
Indigo Girls on the radio. Around my body, the ghost of a son grew.
Jealous, I butchered my Barbies with scissors, played Atari all afternoon—Donkey
Kong, rounds of Frogger in my beanbag chair. Sunlight seethed with me,
lasered our duplex windows. Love meant learning to run.
Mother, where does it end, this story of us?
Nightmares remind me you’ve been gone seven years.
Only now, my prayers are bioluminescent, tractor beams luring your ghost
planet back. But my memory keeps you breathing,
quiet metronome for cicadas flexing their tymbals in the yard. I still talk to you
relentlessly, fevered questions about bodies, children,
secret blood that won’t stop. When will you answer? Aristotle said
time is how we position ourselves relative to change, but I want to believe any
universe flexes like Heteractis aurora, turquoise Beaded Sea Anemone. Space only
valley of muscle, and we are the clownfish slipping through each other to another
world. What is a day without darkness? When tumors clustered your
X-rays, Mother, you became infinite. I am not
your banyan, but I branch and sow. I’m a bird blown through the world. Call me
               daughter,
zeroed. I’ll never let you go.

Sara Henning (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.


Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Burn by Sara Henning

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Burn by Sara Henning (Southern Illinois University Press 2024).

Good Kissing

After Jorie Graham’s “Two Paintings by Gustav Klimt”

The moon, the river bleeding out its glamour
and spume—I wanted to marry it all.
Mosquitoes circling nests of eggs,
dragonflies feasting from dusk-blurred water.
Why did no one teach me that behind
every miracle is a god taking everything
it wants? I'd trace my finger over
the picture book drawing of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil,
savor the stories of women. Proverbs—
Eve, the apple luscious as her sin. Genesis—
Lot's wife's a salt goddess, her body
no Sodom, torched. Salome. Delilah.
Potiphar's wife. Jezebel. But when Robert,
my aunt's boyfriend, bomber jacket
hugging his biceps, edged my aunt against
the sink as she sliced tomatoes,
kissed her with an open mouth? I'd never seen
a man touch a woman like that—
his throat flushed, her bleached Farrah
Fawcett cut catching in his mouth.
She gasped, laughed, begged him to stop.
Because I believed he was killing her,
I ran at him, fisted raised. A humid afternoon
in Georgia, 1989. Even now, I want
to erase Robert's hands from her body—
his touch proving I was stupid to love's hunger.
Good kissing, my aunt said, is what a man
and woman do to make a baby.
Weeks later, she's pregnant when they go
to dinner, hostess seating them in their favorite
booth. The walls a montage of Elvis EPs—
"Love Me Tender," "Viva Las Vegas."
Photos of the King sealed under
lacquer, the table's scratched history.
For women in my family, every
miracle begins with a man, an origin story.
When she told him, he threw down
twenties, walked straight into the night.
No longer body but shadow of court
hearings, custody payments,
he was the hole her daughter
would learn to call father.

Sara Henning (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.


Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: baby, sweetheart, honey by Emily Perkovich

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from baby, sweetheart, honey by Emily Perkovich (Alien Buddha Press 2023).

3.30.22

The pavement cracks a little deeper with each winter, and my knees are a 
splintered mirror, a filly falls and falls, the film loops, the crumbling grows 
to standing, the standing eats the filly, becomes the mare, I become tender 
muscle, tense sinew,

This morning I coughed up a cadaver, palm size, a miniature death, I stained 
the tiles the color of a poltergeist, the pavement cracks, the grout splits,

The mare is sticky between the legs, blackberry compote clumping at her 
feet, the pit of the fruit blinks in slow motion, her knees hit concrete, she 
becomes a backwards aging, I help her pick the eyelashes from the syrup, we 
weep in unison

Emily Perkovich is from the Chicago-land area. She is the Editor in Chief of Querencia Press and on the Women in Leadership Advisory Board with Valparaiso University. Her work strives to erase the stigma surrounding trauma victims and their responses. She is a Best of the Net nominee and a SAFTA scholarship recipient. She is previously published with Harness Magazine, Rogue Agent, Coffin Bell Journal, and Awakenings, among others. She is the author of the poetry collections Godshots Wanted: Apply Within (Sunday Mornings at the River), The Number 12 Looks Just Like You (Finishing Line Press), & baby, sweetheart, honey (Alien Buddha Press) as well as the novella Swallow. You can find more of her work on IG


Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: baby, sweetheart, honey by Emily Perkovich

This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from baby, sweetheart, honey by Emily Perkovich (Alien Buddha Press 2023).

May Crowning

Dry earth splits with repulsion 
There is a paradox in the crying shame that a dehydrated cell forgets how to 
soak 
It’s a crying shame that any devil can conceive an awakening 
I’m comparing swelling to an eviction 
							There is a paradox to— 
I never wanted an open plot until one was thrust upon me 
I watched an orchid blossom beneath the hem of my skirt 
							And I’ll tell you what 
It’s in the petals unfurling that I fall in love 
A tendril scrapes me clean 
And, I do 
I fall in love 
I am the chasm 
I am the crimson rush we love to forget 
I am in love with the building up of an orchid 
							Until all I want is open plots 
Twelve summers can tarnish the bed 
							And I’ll tell you what 
A finger buds slower than an atrium 
I water the blooms with a blood-letting 
							Next summer, there’s always next summer 
And still the new orchids weep

Emily Perkovich is from the Chicago-land area. She is the Editor in Chief of Querencia Press and on the Women in Leadership Advisory Board with Valparaiso University. Her work strives to erase the stigma surrounding trauma victims and their responses. She is a Best of the Net nominee and a SAFTA scholarship recipient. She is previously published with Harness Magazine, Rogue Agent, Coffin Bell Journal, and Awakenings, among others. She is the author of the poetry collections Godshots Wanted: Apply Within (Sunday Mornings at the River), The Number 12 Looks Just Like You (Finishing Line Press), & baby, sweetheart, honey (Alien Buddha Press) as well as the novella Swallow. You can find more of her work on IG


Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.

SAFTA is Seeking a Development Director

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is seeking a Development Director. This volunteer position will run for one year from your start date with a chance to be renewed the following year. The Development Director’s responsibilities includes working with a team of interns and other directors to research grant opportunities, help with drafting grant proposals and close-outs, coordinate between SAFTA department heads, work with our budget office, create new fundraising opportunities, and lead a team to write, edit, and submit national, regional, and local grants.

Qualifications include:

  • Strong organizational, creative problem-solving, and written communication skills
  • Familiarity with online research
  • A keen eye for grammar, punctuation, and syntax
  • A passion for contemporary literature and community arts programs

Previous experience with arts administration and/or grant writing is greatly preferred but not required Applicants are welcome to telecommunicate and therefore are not restricted to living in the Knoxville area.

While this is an unpaid position, all directorships with SAFTA gain real-world experience with a nationally recognized press and arts organization while creating a portfolio of work for future employment opportunities. Directors will also be able to attend all retreats at the Sundress Academy for the Arts for free.

To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to Erin Elizabeth Smith at erin@sundresspublications.com. Applications are due by May 10, 2024.

For more information, visit us at www.sundresspublications.com.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “Mapping & Memory: Poetic Cartographies”

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Mapping & Memory: Poetic Cartographies,” a workshop led by Kenzie Allen on May 8th, 2024, from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

How does a poem teach us to read its map? How can memory allow us to swiftly navigate through vast terrains of time and space within the span of a poem? In this generative workshop inspired by Indigenous and extracanonical methods of mapmaking and storytelling, we’ll chart the literary cartographies of authors like Craig Santos Perez, Richard Siken, Pattiann Rogers, and more, to uncover new possibilities for using context-aware forms and patterns in books and individual poems. 

Through a series of writing exercises, we’ll use memory, cultural inheritances, and geographic imagination to develop new markers and map legends toward making and expanding our own poetic landscapes. Participants should expect to finish the class having generated the start of several new poems, and with new ideas in hand for approaching poetry in both reading and writing. 

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Kenzie Allen via PayPal. Her PayPal is @getkenzieallen.

Kenzie Allen, author of Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024), is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. A finalist for the national Poetry Series, she is the recipient of the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, a 92NY Discovery Prize, and the 49th Parallel Poetry Award.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Tennessee Arts Commission.

Meet Our New Intern: Saturn Browne

Hi! I’m Saturn, and I’m so honored and excited to be an editorial intern! A little about me: I’m a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant to the U.S., a Taurus and ENFJ, and I currently study in Connecticut as a prospective Comparative Literature and ??? (TBD) major. In my free time, I like to create graphics and websites as a means of self-expression, boil maple syrup, drink iced coffee, DJ techno music, visit art galleries/museums/aquariums, and consume an absurd amount of content—books, films, video essays, old albums only discoverable on YouTube, UI/UX tutorials, personal blogs, you name it. This sense of media also pervades my interests and my mind when I write: much of what I produce has been ekphrasis, and I see it as a form that elevates writing to new levels. I also write a lot about bodies of water, love, and grief, and it can be seen through my chapbook BLOODPATHS (Kith Books, 2023), and my work-in-progress project EMPRESS OF LONGING (book about my situationships that have destroyed me). 

The world does not end when you’re seventeen. I knew this when I began writing, yet, at the same time, it does not feel that way for me. When I began writing a few years ago, I had no idea where this practice would take me, and it’s brought me so much wonderful people and things into my life, and I can’t imagine where I’d be otherwise.

I’m currently a senior in high school (hello youngest Sundress intern title!), and entering college next year. Life, for me, has barely begun, yet I also feel that I have experienced enough for a lifetime. Since my sophomore year, I’ve always been the youngest person at poetry commitments, online internships, activism spaces, and more. It’s challenged me in the way that I’ve had to work twice as hard to gain the respect of my peers, yet the feeling of my voice being heard has become much, much more valuable.

I began writing at a time of self-crisis and discovery, yet I’ve been reading for years before. Growing up in southern China, I found myself learning about the world through novels and websites, and when I moved to America, the language barriers fueled my urge to understand my surroundings even further. 

It makes sense, then, why I take so much inspiration from other teen-into-adult poets, and especially writers who are also queer and Asian, such as Kaylee Jeong, Stephanie Chang (both of which were undress interns and helped me find this opportunity), K-Ming Chang, Jennie Xie, Alexander Chee and others. I also find inspiration from pieces of art which honestly document human experiences—Tracy Emin’s My Bed, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Portrait of Ross in L.A., On Kawara’s Today series, for example—and art galleries highlighting marginalized voices and communities from around the world. When I began writing, I’d hoped to channel something similar: by using my experiences as queer, immigrant, FGLI, and more, I wanted to speak to others and let them know their experiences and identities do not make them alone.

My offer at Sundress meant that I could work on becoming the platform to elevate these same artists I admired for most of my life, and be a part of the community which made their voices matter. Whether it be through helping put together PR for manuscripts or writing reviews and interviews highlighting smaller authors, I hope to work and uncover more such voices of intersectionality at Sundress, and bring them to more budding writers like myself. 

Saturn Browne (she/they) is a Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant and the Connecticut Youth Poet Laureate, East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) Artist-in-Residence, and the author of BLOODPATHS. Her work has been recognized by Gone Lawn, GASHER, Beaver Mag, the Pulitzer Center, Foyle Young Poets, and others. She is an incoming undergraduate student at Yale University.