Description: An archivally driven poetry collection that tells the story of the antislavery movement in the United States with a particular focus on its print culture
Brief description: Melissa Range is the author of Scriptorium, winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series competition, and Horse and Rider, a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. Her recent poems have appeared in Ecotone, The Hopkins Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Nation, and Ploughshares. Range has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the American Antiquarian Society, the Fine Arts Work Center, and MacDowell. Originally from East Tennessee, she teaches creative writing and American literature at Lawrence University in Wisconsin.
Review Quotes:
"I celebrate Range's meticulously researched reverie on abolitionist history, woven with the passion of an artist deeply attuned to the power of language. Each superb poem contemplates and amplifies the resilience and humanity of those who fought for freedom. In lines that stitch together archival fragments and lyric vision, this writing 'proof[s] a seam' that joins history, justice, and memory."
--Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia