Persea Books

11/12/2024

Just out from Persea, Where Will We Live if the House Burns Down? by Allison Blevins invites us to inhabit a hybridic world between embodiment and imagination. Its cast of characters—Grim, Sergeant, and the rest—are as vivid as they are un-pin-downable. This is a book that resists classification in its renderings of genre, gender, and disability! Available at your local bookstore and on our website.

11/06/2024

11/01/2024

An excerpt from the essential new essay collection on the transformation of gender Joy Ladin, available from booksellers everywhere and on our website.
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10/26/2024

LAST CHANCE! Submit to the 2025 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry by 10/31! Publication in 2026, $1,000 cash prize, 6-week residency at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy

$30 entry fee helps support the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Projects' programs in schools & prisons. Limited fee waivers available for those in need.

https://perseabooks.submittable.com/forms/initial/edit/116068f1-a214-4656-b13d-0dfcb62e51c7

10/25/2024

We know Nov 5 is a pretty important Tuesday nationally. It’s also the pub date of 2023 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award winner WHERE WILL WE LIVE IF THE HOUSE BURNS DOWN? by Allison Blevins, an extraordinary engagement with gender, family, disability, and the human imagination. We can’t wait for you to read it.

If you order directly from our site between now and the end of November, use code HOUSE25 to receive a 25% discount.

10/23/2024

"Perhaps each poem is its own miniature boxing ring, a site at once frenetic and time sensitive."

Imogen Osborne reviews Raisa Tolchinsky's debut collection, GLASS JAW (Persea Books): https://www.full-stop.net/2024/10/23/reviews/imogenosborne/glass-jaw-raisa-tolchinsky/.

10/15/2024

Interested in joining the sisterhood of Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize winners? See the link in our bio for more information and to enter this year’s contest. The winner receives book publication and the option of an expenses-paid, six-week residency in an Italian castle with the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.
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10/12/2024

Molly McCully Brown (swinging above) won the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry in 2016 for The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, which Persea published the next spring. That summer, Molly spent six weeks at the wondrous Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, a residency offered at no expense to each recipient of the award.

If you are interested in following Molly to Civitella, consider submitting your unpublished first book-manuscript to the 2025 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize competition by the October 31 deadline via Submittable. (As far as we know, the tree swing is still there!) Link in bio.

Please note that there is a $30 entry fee for the contest, all of which goes to the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Project, a not-for-profit devoted to putting important poetry in front of people who need it, including in schools and prisons. We have a limited number of fee waivers for those for whom the fee is not possible.

10/07/2024

Great to see Once out of Nature by Joy Ladin featured in the Page One column of Poets & Writers!

The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Yr Dead by Sam Sax and Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami.

10/01/2024

Happy publication day to [ominous music intensifying] by Alexandra Teague! This is Alexandra’s fourth poetry collection with Persea. (She won the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize way back in 2009.) We love being her publisher!

09/26/2024

Congratulations to Michelle Peñaloza, who has won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for ALL THE WORDS I CAN REMEMBER ARE POEMS. The book previously won the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and will be published by Persea in 2025. Congratulations, and thank you to !

📷: Gritchelle Fallesgon

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09/24/2024

Coming in one week: [ominous music intensifying], the fourth poetry collection by Alexandra Teague, following Or What We’ll Call Desire, The Wise and Foolish Builders, and Mortal Geography (winner of the 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize).

Cover art:
Cover design:

09/24/2024

Thanks to abd for a glowing and eloquent review of Gary Young’s American Analects!
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09/18/2024

Join Joy Ladin for an upcoming Zoom Event entitled Extended Family: The Shekhinah, Trans Identity, My Mother, and Me

With readings and reflections on the braiding of trans and Jewish perspectives in theology, poetry, and family.

Monday, September 23 • 4:45 PM EST • Virtual event • This event is free

Reserve tickets here: https://mtholyoke.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_e8tdSnbEQkmDmemjVeK3bw #/registration?os=ipad

09/13/2024

ICYMI: Raisa Tolchinsky, author of GLASS JAW, talks Dantean cantos and boxing coaching for the Poetry Society of America.

Read Raisa in her own words at PoetrySociety.org!

09/10/2024

Go to this Zoom link for Joy Laudin's event:

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09/10/2024

For those waiting for Joy Ladin's launch stay tuned!

09/10/2024

Today is publication day for ONCE OUT OF NATURE: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender and FAMILY: Poems, both by Joy Ladin. If purchasing these titles from our bookshop, use code LADIN2024 to save 30% 🩶

To celebrate, join the book launch featuring Joy as well as Joan Larkin on Facebook live TONIGHT at 7pm Eastern! 🩶