Another Way to Split Water by Alycia Pirmohamed is almost here!

“Alycia Pirmohamed’s astute and moving poems dwell in a longing that’s a ‘pattern embossed’ on the skin. She transfigures yearning into intimacies with family, Canadian prairies, and rain that ‘knows how to fall in Gujarati.’ An intimacy with language is evident on each page: sonic-rich phrasing, imagery that leaps and soars, and an astonishing attentiveness to the line. Pirmohamed is an immensely gifted poet. Her first book is an opening, a marvel.” —Eduardo C. Corral, Guillotine

"In Alycia Pirmohamed’s first full-length collection, Another Way to Split Water, figures split, double, and even shatter through inheritances of migration..."

—Poetry Foundation

"This is how Another Way to Split Water moves, wending through ossuaries and great plains, making oxbow lakes of prayers and their origins, bifurcating desire and discovery til each word holds its own river. You will want to map the navigations of these poems. "

—Shivanee Ramlochan, Unkillable

Winner, 2020 Pamet River Prize, Alycia Pirmohamed's debut releases November 15. Go here for 20% off until then!

FADED

Say the word dark

translates to how I fold my body

like a fig

against a stippled moon.

Pull a string of sorrows from

my mouth.

Remind me that I am not a swan—

I am a long night of rain

with my mother’s eyes.

Hold my tasbih to my heart.

Imagine we are

elk walking into tall grass.

This dream is the sky opening.

This dream is a river of faces.

This dream is all of the pine trees

replaced with smoke.

I call out to the water and the wind

scatters my thoughts,

fashions distances within me.

I call out Allah—

if I look up, I see a ghost

in the canopy.

7 Feminist Poetry Collections About Gender and Identity Reviewed at Electric Lit!

"A fierce, feminist page-turner of a book, Melnick’s third collection is a riveting follow-up to Landscape With Sex & Violence. 'You can only hear you look like a hooker so many times/ before you become one,' she writes, recounting the story of babysitting for the rabbi’s son as a teen, a chilling parable about survival under patriarchy. With her signature wit and candor, Melnick reckons with a history of misogyny and anti-Semitism, war and atrocity, sexual and domestic violence, myriad abuses of power—and yet there is humor and hopefulness in her voice, a perpetual sense of discovery."

"Shelley Wong is the poet-queen the world needs right now. Her visionary debut, As She Appears, centers queer women of color in shape-shifting poems of becoming and knowing, seeing and being seen. Wong uses white space and silence to pose questions about identity and interiority, femininity and power: 'women are familiar with surrender/ & the appearance of it,' she writes, letting the lines float free on the page."

Read the full review at Electric Lit!

YYB's 2021 Open Reading Period Longlist in Poetry is here!

What an incredible pleasure to announce the YYB 2021 Open Reading Period Longlist in Poetry! Since that took an extra minute, the longlisted authors are able to put in a revised manuscript. The shortlist and publication offers will be announced in January.

And huge thanks to all who submitted! We appreciate all who hung in there with us as we dragged ourself through last year. And we understand why some folks couldn’t wait. Love to you all!!! ORP fiction results coming next week! -KMA