Persea Books

11/09/2025

A new poem in Orion from Persea's own Patrick Rosal!

“And its song, my freight.”

‘Prayer for When I’m Lost’ by Patrick Rosal, in Orion’s Autumn 2025 issue
https://orionmagazine.org/article/prayer-for-when-im-lost/

10/30/2025

Lisa Russ Spaar illuminates new collections by Valencia Robin and Michelle Peñaloza in her newest column on second books of poetry in The Adroit Journal. Both poets are also visual artists, whose painting and collage, respectively, interact with their writing in beautiful ways.

Link in bio!

10/25/2025

The 10/31 deadline to submit to the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry is fast approaching. Women-identifying poets, consider entering your manuscript via Submittable for a chance at publication, $1,000, and an expenses-paid, six-week residency at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy.

The Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize competition is open to self-identifying women who have yet to publish a full-length book of poems. The winner receives publication, an advance of $1,000.00, and publication of her collection by Persea.

10/20/2025

We are crushed to learn of the passing of Jubi Arriola-Headley, an extraordinary poet and human.

Jubi was a light to all, a person of unmatched warmth and generosity. His poems were bracingly and unapologetically Black and q***r, and yet they provided a space for anyone—everyone—to bask, revel, and hope. We are so proud to have worked with Jubi and to have published his glorious second collection, Bound. Rest in power, beautiful soul.

“Jubi Arriola-Headley's poems are essential to me in this complicated, painful, and ultimately luminous world. Jubi's poems, with their rigorous attention to craft and play teach me how I might reimagine the world I write in and live in. What is it to find freedom, joy, and true liberation in the spaces that we are told will destroy us? What is it to say that one will find love and celebration instead? Jubi's poems help me plot a new path.”
— Gabrielle Calvocoressi

10/08/2025

Thanks to Stephanie Burt and ARC for this lovely, deeply considered review of AN OPTIMISM by Cameron Awkward-Rich, available from booksellers everywhere and, until Friday, at a 40% discount from Persea’s website using the discount code GIVEMEOPTIMISM. Read the complete review here: https://arcmag.org/ahead-of-their-time/

10/07/2025

Happy pub day to An Optimism by Cameron Awkward-Rich, a collection that is potent and poignant, skeptical and hopeful, wise and humble. In poems of Black and trans life, the poet communes with Lucille Clifton, Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and others in his search for how to *be* in his body. In this book, says Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Cameron Awkward-Rich offers us something more generous than possibility: he offers us the reckoning of our own wonder, care, and incommensurability.”

For limited time, An Optimism can be ordered at a 40% discount from Persea’s web site using the discount code GIVEMEOPTIMISM. Or, buy the book from your favorite independent bookseller.

Cover art:
Cover design: l

09/16/2025

Happy pub day to ALL THE WORDS I CAN REMEMBER ARE POEMS by Michelle Peñaloza, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets! This joyous, fierce collection—a testament to art’s power to subvert and overcome oppressive forces—includes gorgeous color collages by the poet.

Available from booksellers everywhere and at www.perseabooks.com

“Michelle Peñaloza’s world—overflowing with flowers, languages, ancestors, abundant dinners, laughter, longing, and endless questions—is a delight. This book is a perfectly crafted home for all of us living in diaspora. Peñaloza’s singular voice recasts both personal and global history:
our losses are no longer just sites of grief, but totems of power and resilience. Colonialism never precludes indigenous triumph, reality never precludes hope. These poems make me feel whole.”—Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor

09/04/2025

“To me, this poem is about the power of community, and the necessity of friendship for our collective survival, collective freedom, and collective joy. It’s about the ways we can make the world more habitable, and more HOSPITABLE, for one another. In times that feel divisive and fragmented, this poem is a reminder of what we can do and BE together. It’s a reminder of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.” shares Maggie Smith in today’s episode.
Read Cento Between the Ending and the End by Cameron Awkward-Rich and our full episode transcript at the link in our bio.

09/01/2025

Persea Books is now accepting entries via Submittable to the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, open to self-identified women who have yet to publish a full-length collection. The winner receives publication, $1,000.00, and the option of an expenses-paid, six week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy.

This contest is a collaboration with the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project. All entry fees go towards the LRPP’s mission to put poetry in NYC public schools and prisons. Fee waivers are available on a limited basis. For complete entry guidelines, visit www.perseabooks.com.

08/19/2025

SOFAR by Elizabeth Bradfield comes out one week from today! Use discount code SUMMERSALE to order it from our website at a 20% discount.

“Elizabeth Bradfield’s SOFAR is a sounding—both call and measurement. In this deeply felt collection, Bradfield charts a history of love, longing, and a life lived aboard boats and alongside whales, sharks, seals, birds, and even coyotes. These are poems of place, poems of the heart, and they ring with such tenderness, such longing, they raise in this reader an echoing ache.”
—Donika Kelly, author of Bestiary and The Renunciations

08/05/2025

Happy pub date to Lost Cities by Valenica Robin!

Use the discount code SUMMERSALE on Persea’s website for a 20% discount or purchase the book from your favorite independent bookseller!

08/01/2025

A poem from Lost Cities by is featured in books editor Ron Charles’ newsletter today.

Lost Cities is out next week! Order from our website using discount code SUMMERSALE for a 20% discount.