The poems in Allison Joseph's latest collection are smart, shameless, and empowered confessions of the best kind. In semi-autobiographical verse highlighting in turns light-hearted and harsh realities of modern black womanhood, these poems take the reader down "A History of African-American Hair," visit with both Grace Jones and the Venus de Milo, send Janis Joplin to cheerleading camp, bemoan a treacherous first pair of high heels, and discuss "vagina business." Funny, but never flippant, and always forthcoming about the author's own flaws and foibles, Confessions of a Barefaced Woman is sure to keep readers entranced, entertained, and enlightened.

As Kurt Vonnegut, Indiana's most famous writer, once remarked, "Wherever you go, there is always a Hoosier doing something important there." A Flame Called Indiana features 65 writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry who have all had the pleasure of being Hoosiers at one time or another. Curated by the Indiana University Bloomington creative writing department, this diverse anthology features everything from the immigrant experience to the Indianapolis 500 to science fiction. Altogether, the work stands testament to the vibrancy and creativity of this Midwest state. An excellent gift for your favorite reader and an important resource for creative writers, A Flame Called Indiana serves as both a chronicle of where Indiana's writing is today and a beacon to those who'll take it where it's going next.

The centerpiece of Allison Joseph's sixth full-length poetry collection is a sequence of thirty-four sonnets about losing her father. "Superbly executed, part family history and part homage, Allison Joseph strings the frail human voices across the forceful lines of her verse to summon her absent father back from the dead." -- Maura Stanton

A poetry collection crafted to inspire healing in those tackling mental health issues or to help those closest to them. Paloma is faking it. On the outside, she’s A-Okay. She’s electrified at work, there is a cadence in her step as she walks her dog, she posts memes on Facebook, and she keeps up with most relationships. Looks can be deceiving, however. Inside, Paloma is just going through the motions, and she feels like things are spiraling out of control. But when things are at their darkest, dawn arrives with clarity and focus, and with it, healing. Paloma learns to value small glimmering moments of joy rather than searching for constant happiness, thus building hope for her future. An electric roadmap to healing and a manifesto for wholeness, Happy, Okay?: Poems about Anxiety, Depression, Hope, and Survival, is written in a contemporary style reminiscent of Rupi Kaur and Pierre Alex Jeanty. But this poetry book is not simply a narrative spun in verse. It is an invitation to readers to shake off the stigma and silence of mental health and find strength in the only voice that matters: your own. Whether exploring self-care, social anxiety, or anxiety in relationship, in this inspiring and heartwarming book, you will: Understand how to make happiness a decision, even when you don’t feel it in your bones Find out how to exercise patience and self-acceptance Attract hope and purpose back into your life If you enjoy poetry books or books like Her, Black Girl Magic, Pillow Thoughts, Milk and Honey, or The Sun and Her Flowers, then you will definitely love this book.

For poet Tiana Clark, trees will never be just trees. They will also and always be a row of gallows from which Black bodies once swung. This is an image that she cannot escape, but one that she has learned to lean into as she delves into personal and public histories, explicating memories and muses around race, elegy, family, and faith by making and breaking forms as well as probing mythology, literary history, her own ancestry, and, yes, even Rihanna. I Can’t Talk About the Trees without the Blood, because Tiana cannot engage with the physical and psychic landscape of the South without seeing the braided trauma of the broken past—she will always see blood on the leaves.

In Corporal Muse, poet Allison E. Joseph pulls back the curtain on her writing process, searching for (and finding) The Muse in unexpected places. These are poems of love and praise. They are time machine and magic spell. Corporal Muse is a cross-section of poetic technique so strong it conjures The Muse to wherever the reader holds this book.