Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology amplifies and centers LGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives in a collection of contemporary nature poetry. Showcasing over two hundred queer writers from the nineteenth century to today, Queer Nature offers a new context for and expands upon the canon of nature poetry while also offering new lenses through which to view queerness and the natural world.

Artists from the collection join us live at City of Asylum as well as virtually from their homes across the country.

Presented in partnership with Autumn House Press, an independent publisher based here in Pittsburgh, PA. Autumn House Press believes that literature is an affirmation of the deep and elemental range of the human experience and is committed to publishing first books and lesser-known authors who will become the important voices of their generation.

Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. His books include After Rubén (2020), Glow of Our Sweat (2010), and Puerta del Sol (2005). His poetry has appeared in over twenty anthologies. A native of San Francisco, California, he’s on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), where he teaches courses in Latinx poetry and creative writing. He directs the ILS literary initiative, Letras Latinas. He’s read his work widely, including at universities, bookstores, art galleries, the Dodge Poetry Festival, and the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. For more information, visit: http://franciscoaragon.net.

Sam Bonosevich (she/they) is a queer, nonbinary poet, musician, and storyteller currently based in Philadelphia [unceded Lenni- Lenape land]. Growing up in the woodlands of Vermont and New Hampshire [unceded Abenaki land], she quickly became fascinated by both the beauty and darkness she saw in nature. They have performed their work on stages, in basements, and everywhere in between.

S. Brook Corfman is the author of the poetry collections Luxury, Blue Lace, chosen by Richard Siken for the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, and My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, one of The New York Times Best Poetry Books of 2020, finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender Variant Literature, and winner of the Fordham University Press POL Prize, chosen by Cathy Park Hong. They are also the author of several chapbooks including Frames (Belladonna* Books). (sbrookcorfman.com)

Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and a NEA Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, New England Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low- residency MFA program. She lives in Pittsburgh.

Joy Ladin has published ten books of poetry, including newly published Shekhinah Speaks (Selva Oscura), National Jewish Book Award Winner The Book of Anna, and Lambda Literary Award finalists Transmigration and Impersonation. She is also the author of a memoir, National Jewish Book Award finalist Through the Door of Life; and Lambda Literary and Triangle Award finalist, The Soul of the Stranger. Her writing is available at joyladin.wordpress.com.

Kevin McLellan is the author of: the forthcoming full-length poetry collection, in other words you/ (2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection winner judged by Timothy Liu); the book object Hemispheres (which resides in the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona and other special collections); the full-length poetry collection Ornitheology (2019 Massachusetts Book Awards recipient); the book object [box] (which resides in the Blue Star Collection at Harvard University and other special collections); the full-length poetry collection Tributary; and the chapbook Round Trip.

Xan Phillips is a poet and visual artist from rural Ohio. The recipient of a Whiting Award, Lambda Literary Award, and The Judith A. Markowitz Award, Xan is the author of HULL (Nightboat Books, 2019) and Reasons for Smoking, which won the 2016 Seattle Review Chapbook contest judged by Claudia Rankine. They have received fellowships from Brown University, Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. Xan’s poetry is featured in Berlin Quarterly Review, Bomb Magazine, Crazyhorse, Poets.org, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Michael Walsh is the author of two poetry collections, The Dirt Riddles (University of Arkansas Press) and Creep Love (Autumn House Press), as well as two chapbooks, Adam Walking the Garden and Sleepwalks (Red Dragonfly Press). He is the editor of Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology.

Tobias Wray’s No Doubt I Will Return a Different Man won the CSU Poetry Center’s Lighthouse Poetry Series Competition. His work has found homes in Blackbird, Hunger Mountain, Meridian, Verse Daily, and The Georgia Review. He teaches at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. Reach him at www.tobiaswray.com.

Grab your own copy of Queer Nature at City of Asylum Bookstore.

Queer Nature Presented by Autumn House Press