Let’s be honest. We writers dream that the books that live inside us will find their way into bookstores, libraries, and homes, will come to life in the hands of avid readers under shady hammocks or in favorite chairs. These books will have splendid covers and rave reviews that honor the love we put into the process. But for many aspiring writers, the journey between finishing a manuscript and launching a book is veiled in mystery. The cogs and wheels of publishing are strangely opaque to the authors themselves. This Birthing the Book Series will both illuminate the process, and more importantly celebrate authors who have recently “birthed” their books.

Erin Hoover’s No Spare People is a book of poetry, women’s studies, gender studies, and writing about the South. It documents the joys and perils of a tiny mother-daughter family navigating life on the margins. From poems about finding autonomy as a queer, unpartnered parent by choice in the South to those chronicling a generation’s economic instability, Hoover rejects so-called “acceptable losses” stemming from inequalities of gender, race, and class. The book asks, what happens to the woman no longer willing to live a lie?  How does language invent not only identity, but possibility?

“Erin Hoover’s second collection, No Spare People, recalls to me the sobering effect of encountering Adrienne Rich’s work in the late ’80s. These poems deal in reality, eschewing the fantastic … This is a deeply intellectual and expertly wrought collection.”  —Cate Marvin

Note: Erin will teach a class on poetry and motherhood at The Porch on 4/13.