New Review of In Which I Play the Runaway in Los Angeles Review

There's a new review of my book In Which I Play the Runaway (which just turned 1) in the Los Angeles Review!

Reviewer Sarah Appleton writes: "In Which I Play the Runaway is a nuanced picture of home and identity rendered with striking—sometimes beautiful, sometimes searing—language. There are lines the reader can feel on their tongue, as in “Self-portrait in Hurt, Virginia”—“I was born a fleck of mill trash / bedded in a black hill, a cry / stoppered with crabgrass”—that make the narrator’s plight visceral and bodily. Perhaps this line, later in the poem, sums the collection up most: “You’ll never tell home from hurt, / my father said. His kiss was a curse / placed on my mother’s forehead.” The hurt the narrator’s father speaks of spirals outward from that cursing kiss; it pervades the narrator’s life, from her childhood home and dissolution of her parents’ marriage to her own broken relationships. The collection is one to return to again and again, not only to be tantalized by Hurt’s language and lingering imagery but also to question one’s own ideas of self, identity, and home."