10/01/2026
👀 Gabriel Antonio Reed's REACH—winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award—is out April 6, 2027.
https://books-events.graywolfpress.org/books/reach
New fatherhood sends the speaker of Gabriel Antonio Reed’s REACH back to the tenderness and hurt of his own childhood. Moments with his child in the garden elicit memories of his grandmother, and intimate dreams about people outside of his romantic relationship recall his parents’ histories and the q***r experiences of his youth. Despite his own mental health struggles, his child becomes a reason to persist, which mirrors the role he played in his own mother’s life.
Even as poems unearth patterns of care and harm, they turn to the sources of pain with radical empathy. This debut collection argues that writing can be part of the way we tend to one another and to ourselves.
