Racing Hummingbirds examines, critiques, and at times delights in one woman's navigation through the many worlds of manic depression and her struggle to maintain humanity in the process. Jeanann Verlee's award-winning debut collection is a series of narratives, prayers, and conjurings which address gender, sex, race, poverty, heartbreak, and survival with such stark intimacy, you will find yourself living inside. These poems cannot possibly be about you, yet they are. They cross boundaries and reclaim hope. They are as the opening poem suggests, nothing short of communion. Fierce and formidable, Jeanann Verlee is poised to make an indelible mark – much like a razor slashing silk – on what's become a comfortably placid poetic landscape. Her unflinching and uncompromising stanzas will change the way you move through the world. -Patricia Smith, “Blood Dazzler” Any storyteller can recount powerful experience [she] makes you feel something powerful is happening in the telling. It is when safety dissolves that we discover possibility...It’s a special person that will make you wish they were your villain. -Brian S. Ellis, “Uncontrolled Experiments in Freedom" ...a roller coaster of imagistic magic. Form, language, allusion, and voice interact, collide, shape-shift, and duel...throughout an utterly arresting mosaic. -Danse Macabre Magazine

Jeanann Verlee's second book, Said the Manic to the Muse, takes a deeper, more focused look at the erratic, whimsical, ominous, and sometimes perilous ways manic depression functions. Introduced through the careful prophecy of three archetypes: Medea, Jezebel, and Kali–each a woman largely misrepresented and wholly misunderstood–these poems detail the story of one woman's struggle to maintain both strength and sanity in the face of abandonment and aging. From dangerous trysts and barroom brawls to "grief-induced psychosis," Said the Manic to the Muse recounts the year she lost everything, including her mind.

As if she discovered a small army of silenced women captive in her pen, Megan Falley releases them in the spilled ink that is her most brilliant collection of poems, After the Witch Hunt. Demanding "if you really love a writer, bury her in all your awful and watch as she scrawls her way out," her book does exactly that. An incessant digging, a journey in building escape routes, armed with both humor and a brazen darkness, each poem in this book of bloodletting is another swing of the pick and axe in this young woman's labor, insistent upon light.

In her third book, PREY, Jeanann Verlee examines predatory relationships from childhood onward. Drawing parallels between human and non-human predators, the poems collected here strive to illuminate the trauma of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse-exploring what it is to become prey.

A thrilling new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See explores the lives of a Chinese mother and her daughter who has been adopted by an American couple. Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate—the first automobile any of them have seen—and a stranger arrives. In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. In her biggest seller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, See introduced the Yao people to her readers. Here she shares the customs of another Chinese ethnic minority, the Akha, whose world will soon change. Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates for the stranger and is among the first to reject the rules that have shaped her existence. When she has a baby outside of wedlock, rather than stand by tradition, she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her in the nearest city. After mother and daughter have gone their separate ways, Li-yan slowly emerges from the security and insularity of her village to encounter modern life while Haley grows up a privileged and well-loved California girl. Despite Haley’s happy home life, she wonders about her origins; and Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. They both search for and find answers in the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for generations. A powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

Aaron Samuels, raised in Providence, Rhode Island by a Jewish mother and a Black father, is a Cave Canem Fellow and a nationally acclaimed performer. In this ground-breaking collection of poems, Samuels examines the beauty and contradictions of his own mixed identity with gut-wrenching narratives, humor, and passionate verve.

You don't have to be an experienced birder to enjoy this guide! With hundreds of illustrations and a user-friendly format, you'll soon be spotting and identifying birds in your locale in no time. The updated text highlights the latest trends in birding and the most up-to-date ornithological information. -- adapted from back cover