Tether & Lung

Kimberly Ann Priest is the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells and the author of Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications), finalist for the 2021 American Best Book Awards. Her chapbooks include The Optimist Shelters in Place (Harbor Editions), Parrot Flower (Glass Poetry Press) and still life (PANK) and her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Birmingham Poetry Review as well as the second edition of Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer's Guide and Anthology from Bloomsbury Academic. She is an assistant professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University and a volunteer teaching artist for young writers at The Telling Room in Portland, Maine.

“Like the finest impressionist paintings, these poems’ medium of linguistic light and shadow render the many nuances of a heartfelt and hard-won life, testament to the joys and sorrows of womanhood, motherhood, and marriage. Like the most arresting symphonies, the musical lyricism of these poems captivates the soul line by line. Like the most compelling collections, this book elucidates our understanding of struggles and hopes with utterly unique and surprising tropes.”—Richard Blanco, fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet and author of Homeland of my Body