Orbit is a collection built on cycles. Taking as its inspiration the path Earth takes around the sun, Orbit begins in the darkness of winter, 2019 and tells stories of loss and alienation grounded in the broken mills and abandoned farms of my part of Western Maine.
“This book is a beautiful, high-stakes coming of age tale about survival on an old square-sailed rigger. It’s also a vivid, stirring reminder that again and again the natural world will reduce us to our most elemental selves and allow us to finally see and know who we are.”
—Susan Conley, author of Landslide and the memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune
On the shores of Consecration Pond, a burn victim begs her husband’s ghost for forgiveness for failing to save him, a retired teacher counsels a reporter seeking easy answers to the cause of his neighbor’s death, and a boy’s self-imposed rite of passage nearly costs him his life.
The eleven linked short stories in Laura Bonazzoli’s collection take place in and around the same pond in rural Maine. Together, these stories offer a meditation on the nature of wisdom, the risks and gifts of allowing ourselves to be seen, and the challenge of creating meaning in the wake of loss.
These are the prayers we most need right now—prayers for courage, accountability, awe and uncertainty. Poem prayers that link us more deeply to each other and the miraculous world we inhabit. Spare prayers as essential as bone. Through the brittle, the failed, the broken, Nan Seymour’s love of life shines through.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Hush and Naked for Tea
Nan Seymour’s debut collection of poetry, prayers not meant for heaven includes 24 poems which Nan writes “were never meant to ascend.” They read like tinctures, infused with hope, humility, and healing.
Spare in form but rich in tenderness, reverence, and connection, prayers not meant for heaven is a devotional for our times, a spiritual field guide for the heart.
“This book entranced me, amazed me, made me laugh out loud with delight. A celebration of human resilience and the power of the imagination, Maya’s lockdown recreations of contemporary art portraits became a sustaining project for her during 2020, and this extraordinary book is the result.”
—Diana Whitney, editor of You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves (Workman Publishing) and author of Girl Trouble