Holly by grace (ge) gilbert

grace (ge) gilbert’s Holly merges poetry, memoir, and visual art in an effort to recreate the author’s grandmother, who was murdered in her home in 1976, and to make sense of their ensuing relationship with their father, who found his mother’s body when he was eleven years old. Having never been told explicitly by their parents about her murder, gilbert pieces together her grandmother’s story through fragment, ephemera, history, and the imaginary, looking past the spectacle of the murdered woman and into the things that come, like ripples, after.

GRACE (GE) GILBERT (they/them) is a poet, writer and collage artist. They are the author of Holly (YesYes Books, 2026) and three chapbooks. Work can be found in Best of the Net Anthology 2023, Iowa Review, Pleiades, Foglifter, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. They received their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022, where they now teach. They also teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at Brooklyn Poets, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and other institutions. Learn more at gracegegilbert.com.