Sunday, Mar 12, 2023 3:00 PM

Location:
A Cappella Books
208 Haralson Avenue, NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30307


With crystalline precision, Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s Dear Outsiders immerses us in the dream-logic of childhood. A strange, surreal plunge into underwater domesticity, orphanhood, and grief, Sadre-Orafai’s lyric prose is a tidal force, weaving a syntax that pushes and pulls the reader through the terror of absence and estrangement. Spoken through a plural first-person we, Sadre-Orafai invents a grammar of connected memory and collective loss, the act of remembering itself a fugue state in which the undertow of grief “is the rip that sweeps bodies under and into [our chests].” A singular, haunting collection. —Vanessa Angélica Villareal, author of “Beast Meridian”

A Cappella Books welcomes acclaimed poet and professor of creative writing at Kennesaw State University Jenny Sadre-Orafai for an afternoon reading and book signing in honor of her new collection, “Dear Outsiders.” 

This event is free and open to the public, and copies of the book will be available for purchase.

About the Book

“Dear Outsiders” explores how we are part of and stranger to our environments and to our families and how identities form by where and who we come from. Told through two siblings’ perspectives of the loss of their parents, the book is a map of isolation, longing, and what it means to be deserted and alive. 

About the Author

Sadre-Orafai is an Iranian Mexican American poet and writer. She is the co-author of “Book of Levitations” and the author of “Malak” and “Paper, Cotton, Leather.” Her poetry has appeared in Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, The Cortland Review, and Hotel Amerika. Her prose has appeared in VIDA Review, Fourteen Hills, and The Los Angeles Review. She cofounded Josephine Quarterly and teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University.