Join us on Wednesday, June 12 at 7pm PT when we welcome Katie Peterson and Jennifer Tseng to celebrate their latest books Fog and Smoke and Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive, here at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/Livestream link available soon
Praise for Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
"A kaleidoscopic book that performs grief's tireless and ambitious work, Jennifer Tseng's poems, aptly narrowed and scalpel-shaped, concussive with enjambment and hard stops, commit to the work of excavation and salvage--but do so via the heartbreaking and heart filled collaboration with the dead and the ghosts that go on living in our words. A clear-eyed and courageous feat."--Ocean Vuong, author of Time Is a Mother and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive asks: what do we remember if we go further, and further still? Pulling from the exoskeleton of the speaker's father's letters, these poems worm their way through memory, language, childhood, and diaspora, creating new epistolary creatures: 'Love rid itself / Then led me here.' Deeply intimate, these poems pulsate with grief and terror, as well as tenderness toward the healing self. Each fragment, each line break is gorgeously considered, as each ghost unfurls with complicated longing: 'My ghost, my guessed. / Where are you, farther?'"--Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive braids silence and grief, intergenerational trauma and personal memory. These poems and hymns show the many faces of language, from what could have been to what is now possible. Tseng spares no words for the neglected plant which flowers anyway. The intimate letters from a father press firmly into the page, holding worlds of duty, alarm, failure, and unbearable love."--E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love
About Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
Crafted with lines from her late father's letters, Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive is a portrait of an immigrant, a rootless person whose unspoken loss--that of his native geography, family, traditions, language--underlies every word. Though her father's first language was Mandarin, for more than twenty years he wrote these letters in English, so that she could understand them. Some are riddled with errors, some nearly unintelligible. Lines from his letters appear as titles and are scattered throughout the poems, blending voices of father and daughter. This collection enacts what it means to lose someone and commune with them simultaneously--the paradox of grief and all it gives us.
About Jennifer Tseng
Jennifer Tseng is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz. She is the author of two previous full-length poetry collections: The Man With My Face and Red Flower, White Flower. Her flash fiction collection, The Passion of Woo & Isolde, was a Firecracker Award finalist and winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award; and her novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness, was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the New England Book Award.
Praise for Fog and Smoke
"Each line shines in the sun like stained glass. Fog and Smoke is a triumph of observation and intimacy that invigorates the reader to act for the natural world." --Michael Ruzicka, Booklist
About Fog and Smoke
Katie Peterson unfurls the quotidian fabric of our lives, patterned with the difficulties of language and this moment.
Confusion frames the human predicament. In Katie Peterson's Fog and Smoke, confusion is, literally, our climate. Writing to and from the California landscape, Peterson sees fog and smoke as literal--one a habitual, natural weather event, the other an increasingly common aftereffect of the West's drought-caused fires. But they are also metaphysical. Fog and smoke reflect the true conditions (and frustrations) of our ability to perceive and to connect. Peterson writes, "I've been speaking about it at a distance. / Now I want to talk about its thickness. / A person could get killed in here."
The collection moves through three sections: First, the poet follows her local fog's cyclical journey of descent and dispersion. Second, in a sort of pastoral interlude, she travels widely, almost erratically, to the California desert, the greater world, and ancient history. Finally, she descends into the enclosed space of the household, and the increased confinement and intimacy of raising a child during the pandemic. Peterson unfolds the small moments that make up our lives and reveals the truths contained within them, and her poems capture the lyricism of our daily rhythms--the interruptions, dialogues, and epiphanies.
About Katie Peterson
Katie Peterson is the author of the poetry collections This One Tree; Permission; The Accounts, winner of the UNT Rilke Prize; and A Piece of Good News. She lives in California and teaches at the University of California, Davis.
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Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/Livestream link available soon
Praise for Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
"A kaleidoscopic book that performs grief's tireless and ambitious work, Jennifer Tseng's poems, aptly narrowed and scalpel-shaped, concussive with enjambment and hard stops, commit to the work of excavation and salvage--but do so via the heartbreaking and heart filled collaboration with the dead and the ghosts that go on living in our words. A clear-eyed and courageous feat."--Ocean Vuong, author of Time Is a Mother and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive asks: what do we remember if we go further, and further still? Pulling from the exoskeleton of the speaker's father's letters, these poems worm their way through memory, language, childhood, and diaspora, creating new epistolary creatures: 'Love rid itself / Then led me here.' Deeply intimate, these poems pulsate with grief and terror, as well as tenderness toward the healing self. Each fragment, each line break is gorgeously considered, as each ghost unfurls with complicated longing: 'My ghost, my guessed. / Where are you, farther?'"--Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive braids silence and grief, intergenerational trauma and personal memory. These poems and hymns show the many faces of language, from what could have been to what is now possible. Tseng spares no words for the neglected plant which flowers anyway. The intimate letters from a father press firmly into the page, holding worlds of duty, alarm, failure, and unbearable love."--E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love
About Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
Crafted with lines from her late father's letters, Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive is a portrait of an immigrant, a rootless person whose unspoken loss--that of his native geography, family, traditions, language--underlies every word. Though her father's first language was Mandarin, for more than twenty years he wrote these letters in English, so that she could understand them. Some are riddled with errors, some nearly unintelligible. Lines from his letters appear as titles and are scattered throughout the poems, blending voices of father and daughter. This collection enacts what it means to lose someone and commune with them simultaneously--the paradox of grief and all it gives us.
About Jennifer Tseng
Jennifer Tseng is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz. She is the author of two previous full-length poetry collections: The Man With My Face and Red Flower, White Flower. Her flash fiction collection, The Passion of Woo & Isolde, was a Firecracker Award finalist and winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award; and her novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness, was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the New England Book Award.
Praise for Fog and Smoke
"Each line shines in the sun like stained glass. Fog and Smoke is a triumph of observation and intimacy that invigorates the reader to act for the natural world." --Michael Ruzicka, Booklist
About Fog and Smoke
Katie Peterson unfurls the quotidian fabric of our lives, patterned with the difficulties of language and this moment.
Confusion frames the human predicament. In Katie Peterson's Fog and Smoke, confusion is, literally, our climate. Writing to and from the California landscape, Peterson sees fog and smoke as literal--one a habitual, natural weather event, the other an increasingly common aftereffect of the West's drought-caused fires. But they are also metaphysical. Fog and smoke reflect the true conditions (and frustrations) of our ability to perceive and to connect. Peterson writes, "I've been speaking about it at a distance. / Now I want to talk about its thickness. / A person could get killed in here."
The collection moves through three sections: First, the poet follows her local fog's cyclical journey of descent and dispersion. Second, in a sort of pastoral interlude, she travels widely, almost erratically, to the California desert, the greater world, and ancient history. Finally, she descends into the enclosed space of the household, and the increased confinement and intimacy of raising a child during the pandemic. Peterson unfolds the small moments that make up our lives and reveals the truths contained within them, and her poems capture the lyricism of our daily rhythms--the interruptions, dialogues, and epiphanies.
About Katie Peterson
Katie Peterson is the author of the poetry collections This One Tree; Permission; The Accounts, winner of the UNT Rilke Prize; and A Piece of Good News. She lives in California and teaches at the University of California, Davis.
Join us on Wednesday, June 12 at 7pm PT when we welcome Katie Peterson and Jennifer Tseng to celebrate their latest books Fog and Smoke and Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive, here at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/Livestream link available soon
Praise for Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
"A kaleidoscopic book that performs grief's tireless and ambitious work, Jennifer Tseng's poems, aptly narrowed and scalpel-shaped, concussive with enjambment and hard stops, commit to the work of excavation and salvage--but do so via the heartbreaking and heart filled collaboration with the dead and the ghosts that go on living in our words. A clear-eyed and courageous feat."--Ocean Vuong, author of Time Is a Mother and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive asks: what do we remember if we go further, and further still? Pulling from the exoskeleton of the speaker's father's letters, these poems worm their way through memory, language, childhood, and diaspora, creating new epistolary creatures: 'Love rid itself / Then led me here.' Deeply intimate, these poems pulsate with grief and terror, as well as tenderness toward the healing self. Each fragment, each line break is gorgeously considered, as each ghost unfurls with complicated longing: 'My ghost, my guessed. / Where are you, farther?'"--Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive braids silence and grief, intergenerational trauma and personal memory. These poems and hymns show the many faces of language, from what could have been to what is now possible. Tseng spares no words for the neglected plant which flowers anyway. The intimate letters from a father press firmly into the page, holding worlds of duty, alarm, failure, and unbearable love."--E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love
About Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
Crafted with lines from her late father's letters, Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive is a portrait of an immigrant, a rootless person whose unspoken loss--that of his native geography, family, traditions, language--underlies every word. Though her father's first language was Mandarin, for more than twenty years he wrote these letters in English, so that she could understand them. Some are riddled with errors, some nearly unintelligible. Lines from his letters appear as titles and are scattered throughout the poems, blending voices of father and daughter. This collection enacts what it means to lose someone and commune with them simultaneously--the paradox of grief and all it gives us.
About Jennifer Tseng
Jennifer Tseng is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz. She is the author of two previous full-length poetry collections: The Man With My Face and Red Flower, White Flower. Her flash fiction collection, The Passion of Woo & Isolde, was a Firecracker Award finalist and winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award; and her novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness, was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the New England Book Award.
Praise for Fog and Smoke
"Each line shines in the sun like stained glass. Fog and Smoke is a triumph of observation and intimacy that invigorates the reader to act for the natural world." --Michael Ruzicka, Booklist
About Fog and Smoke
Katie Peterson unfurls the quotidian fabric of our lives, patterned with the difficulties of language and this moment.
Confusion frames the human predicament. In Katie Peterson's Fog and Smoke, confusion is, literally, our climate. Writing to and from the California landscape, Peterson sees fog and smoke as literal--one a habitual, natural weather event, the other an increasingly common aftereffect of the West's drought-caused fires. But they are also metaphysical. Fog and smoke reflect the true conditions (and frustrations) of our ability to perceive and to connect. Peterson writes, "I've been speaking about it at a distance. / Now I want to talk about its thickness. / A person could get killed in here."
The collection moves through three sections: First, the poet follows her local fog's cyclical journey of descent and dispersion. Second, in a sort of pastoral interlude, she travels widely, almost erratically, to the California desert, the greater world, and ancient history. Finally, she descends into the enclosed space of the household, and the increased confinement and intimacy of raising a child during the pandemic. Peterson unfolds the small moments that make up our lives and reveals the truths contained within them, and her poems capture the lyricism of our daily rhythms--the interruptions, dialogues, and epiphanies.
About Katie Peterson
Katie Peterson is the author of the poetry collections This One Tree; Permission; The Accounts, winner of the UNT Rilke Prize; and A Piece of Good News. She lives in California and teaches at the University of California, Davis.
read more
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/Livestream link available soon
Praise for Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
"A kaleidoscopic book that performs grief's tireless and ambitious work, Jennifer Tseng's poems, aptly narrowed and scalpel-shaped, concussive with enjambment and hard stops, commit to the work of excavation and salvage--but do so via the heartbreaking and heart filled collaboration with the dead and the ghosts that go on living in our words. A clear-eyed and courageous feat."--Ocean Vuong, author of Time Is a Mother and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive asks: what do we remember if we go further, and further still? Pulling from the exoskeleton of the speaker's father's letters, these poems worm their way through memory, language, childhood, and diaspora, creating new epistolary creatures: 'Love rid itself / Then led me here.' Deeply intimate, these poems pulsate with grief and terror, as well as tenderness toward the healing self. Each fragment, each line break is gorgeously considered, as each ghost unfurls with complicated longing: 'My ghost, my guessed. / Where are you, farther?'"--Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
"Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive braids silence and grief, intergenerational trauma and personal memory. These poems and hymns show the many faces of language, from what could have been to what is now possible. Tseng spares no words for the neglected plant which flowers anyway. The intimate letters from a father press firmly into the page, holding worlds of duty, alarm, failure, and unbearable love."--E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others and A Lesser Love
About Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive
Crafted with lines from her late father's letters, Jennifer Tseng's Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive is a portrait of an immigrant, a rootless person whose unspoken loss--that of his native geography, family, traditions, language--underlies every word. Though her father's first language was Mandarin, for more than twenty years he wrote these letters in English, so that she could understand them. Some are riddled with errors, some nearly unintelligible. Lines from his letters appear as titles and are scattered throughout the poems, blending voices of father and daughter. This collection enacts what it means to lose someone and commune with them simultaneously--the paradox of grief and all it gives us.
About Jennifer Tseng
Jennifer Tseng is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at UC Santa Cruz. She is the author of two previous full-length poetry collections: The Man With My Face and Red Flower, White Flower. Her flash fiction collection, The Passion of Woo & Isolde, was a Firecracker Award finalist and winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award; and her novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness, was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the New England Book Award.
Praise for Fog and Smoke
"Each line shines in the sun like stained glass. Fog and Smoke is a triumph of observation and intimacy that invigorates the reader to act for the natural world." --Michael Ruzicka, Booklist
About Fog and Smoke
Katie Peterson unfurls the quotidian fabric of our lives, patterned with the difficulties of language and this moment.
Confusion frames the human predicament. In Katie Peterson's Fog and Smoke, confusion is, literally, our climate. Writing to and from the California landscape, Peterson sees fog and smoke as literal--one a habitual, natural weather event, the other an increasingly common aftereffect of the West's drought-caused fires. But they are also metaphysical. Fog and smoke reflect the true conditions (and frustrations) of our ability to perceive and to connect. Peterson writes, "I've been speaking about it at a distance. / Now I want to talk about its thickness. / A person could get killed in here."
The collection moves through three sections: First, the poet follows her local fog's cyclical journey of descent and dispersion. Second, in a sort of pastoral interlude, she travels widely, almost erratically, to the California desert, the greater world, and ancient history. Finally, she descends into the enclosed space of the household, and the increased confinement and intimacy of raising a child during the pandemic. Peterson unfolds the small moments that make up our lives and reveals the truths contained within them, and her poems capture the lyricism of our daily rhythms--the interruptions, dialogues, and epiphanies.
About Katie Peterson
Katie Peterson is the author of the poetry collections This One Tree; Permission; The Accounts, winner of the UNT Rilke Prize; and A Piece of Good News. She lives in California and teaches at the University of California, Davis.
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