“Everyone warns us off the rocks. / But what will keep us from the river?” Leigh asks in her debut collection, which pieces together a kind of mythology in which the surreal and celestial coexist with the realities of childhood abuse as an adult speaker grapples with its lasting emotional trauma. Rooted in a place of deep faith and bottomless compassion, Leigh’s speaker struggles to remember, and to remind us all, “that to worship is to survive is to be / wholly human.”

EUGENIA LEIGH is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets & Writers Magazine, Kundiman, Rattle, and The Asian American Literary Review. She serves as Poetry Editor of Kartika Review and lives in New York City.