Brynn Saito + Jacqueline Tchakalian

Brynn Saito’s new book of poems is Power Made Us Swoon. Kazim Ali says, “The questions this book asks of its mythological and actual heroes are questions I want to know the answers to. Her own are brave…but they are also beautiful. As the poet reassures herself, ‘Your spirit is a songstress/ occupying the sea.’” Her first collection is The Palace of Contemplating Departure, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award; she also co-authored the chapbook Bright Power, Dark Peace with Traci Brimhall. Anthologized by both Helen Vendler and Ishmael Reed, she has received a Kundiman Asian American Poetry Fellowship and the Poets 11 Award from the San Francisco Public Library.

Jacqueline Tchakalian’s debut book of poems is The Size of Our Bed. Charles Harper Webb says it “is powered by the pain of loss, but leavened by careful craft and a heart that, in being true to itself, cannot be permanently cast down. I celebrate how these poems rise from the ashes of grief, triumphant and full of life.” Trained as a visual artist, she has come to poetry late in her life. That discovery caused a ten-year hiatus in her painting, but it also resulted in this powerful book.