Rebecca Lehmann – författare

Ringer approaches womanhood from two directions: an examination of ways that women’s identities are tied to domestic spaces, like homes, cars, grocery stores, and daycare centers; and a consideration of physical, sexual, and political violence against women, both historically and in the present day. Lehmann’s poems look outward, and go beyond cataloguing trespasses against women by biting back against patriarchal systems of oppression, and against perpetrators of violence against women. Many poems in Ringer are ecopoetical, functioning in a “junk” or “sad” pastoral mode, inhabiting abandoned, forgotten, and sometimes impoverished landscapes of rural America.

Shortlist, 2026 Indiana Author AwardsRebecca Lehmann’s The Sweating Sickness contains wide-ranging topics—the suicide of an abusive ex, parenting young children, fairy tales, reproductive rights, domestic violence, ghost stories, ancient myth—all set to the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both personal and political, these poems interrogate how we grieve, what it means to be a woman in post-Roe America, and how private and public ghosts can come back to haunt us. Surrealist, maximalist, formal, and with an ear to the underworld, The Sweating Sickness spins the reader into an eco-fabulist wonderland, where anything can happen, and does.

‘Original, audacious. . . A must-read for lovers of history, magic and revenge’ Erin KellyDISGRACED. BEHEADED. REVIVED . . .When Anne Boleyn wakes up after her execution she finds she is not yet ready for death. She has unfinished business with the king who had her murdered and is determined to secure her daughter, Elizabeth’s, future. She escapes the tower, sews her head back on, and sets out on a quest for justice.But Anne’s path will not run smoothly as she encounters the dangers of London and the countryside, and rumours start to swirl about sightings of her ghost. Luckily for her, she will find help from a chance meeting with fenlander Alice, who offers her the possibility of a different future.The Beheading Game takes you into the heart and mind of one of the most talked-about women of all time and finally gives her the chance to tell her side of the story.‘Magic, romance, revenge, and an utterly irresistible heroine – this book is an instant classic’ Lev Grossman, author of The Bright Sword'Vulnerable, furious, triumphant and moving, I never wanted to let go of the deeply human Anne that Lehmann conjures’ Kat Dunn, author of Hungerstone'Fabulous! A marvelously inventive and mythic reworking of the story of Anne Boleyn. I loved it' Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

‘Original, audacious. . . A must-read for lovers of history, magic and revenge’ Erin KellyDisgraced. Beheaded. Revived . . .When Anne Boleyn wakes up after her execution she finds she is not yet ready for death. She has unfinished business with the king who had her murdered and is determined to secure her daughter, Elizabeth’s, future. She escapes the tower, sews her head back on, and sets out on a quest for justice.But Anne’s path will not run smoothly as she encounters the dangers of London and the countryside, and rumours start to swirl about sightings of her ghost. Luckily for her, she will find help from a chance meeting with fenlander Alice, who offers her the possibility of a different future.The Beheading Game takes you into the heart and mind of one of the most talked-about women of all time and finally gives her the chance to tell her side of the story.‘Magic, romance, revenge, and an utterly irresistible heroine – this book is an instant classic’ Lev Grossman, author of The Bright Sword'Vulnerable, furious, triumphant and moving, I never wanted to let go of the deeply human Anne that Lehmann conjures’ Kat Dunn, author of Hungerstone'Fabulous! A marvelously inventive and mythic reworking of the story of Anne Boleyn. I loved it' Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

‘Original, audacious. . . A must-read for lovers of history, magic and revenge’ Erin KellyDISGRACED. BEHEADED. REVIVED . . .When Anne Boleyn wakes up after her execution she finds she is not yet ready for death. She has unfinished business with the king who had her murdered and is determined to secure her daughter, Elizabeth’s, future. She escapes the tower, sews her head back on, and sets out on a quest for justice.But Anne’s path will not run smoothly as she encounters the dangers of London and the countryside, and rumours start to swirl about sightings of her ghost. Luckily for her, she will find help from a chance meeting with fenlander Alice, who offers her the possibility of a different future.The Beheading Game takes you into the heart and mind of one of the most talked-about women of all time and finally gives her the chance to tell her side of the story.‘Magic, romance, revenge, and an utterly irresistible heroine – this book is an instant classic’ Lev Grossman, author of The Bright Sword'Vulnerable, furious, triumphant and moving, I never wanted to let go of the deeply human Anne that Lehmann conjures’ Kat Dunn, author of Hungerstone'Fabulous! A marvelously inventive and mythic reworking of the story of Anne Boleyn. I loved it' Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love