Born Backwards

Born Backwards, Tanya Olson's third collection, reports from inside butch culture in the 1980s American South as it traces how geography, family, experiences, and popular culture shape one queer life. The collection argues for recording these moments before they disappear, not for the purposes of nostalgia but because of their importance to building a future. Like much of Olson's other work, these poems locate the extraordinary within the commonplace- hearing the songs of the Carter Family, reading a child's version of Frankenstein, discovering k.d. lang, and watching soap operas with a grandmother become the building blocks of becoming an individual.

Author: Tanya Olson
Publisher: YesYes Books
Published: 06/18/2024
Pages: 90
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.26lbs
Size: 8.00h x 6.00w x 0.24d
ISBN: 9781936919994

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/19/2024

About the Author
Olson, Tanya: - Tanya Olson is the author of Boyishly, which won the American Book Award, Stay, and her newest collection, Born Backwards, all out from YesYes Books. She is also the recipient of a Discovery/Boston Review prize and an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Lambda Literary Foundation. Her poems have been included in Best American Poems 2015 and Please Excuse This Poem. Olson has been a featured reader at the Enoch Pratt Reading Series, Outwrite DC, the Stadler Center for Poetry, and the Dodge Poetry Festival.