NEW ORLEANS (press release) – Blue Cypress Books hosts a book signing with poets Peter Cooley and Maeve Holler on Saturday, March 23, at 2 p.m. Mr. Cooley will sign his newest book, “Accounting For The Dark.” Ms. Holler will sign her new book, “How To Leave Your Family.”
This event is free and open to the public and will take place at the bookstore, located at 8123 Oak Street, New Orleans, LA 70118. Copies of Mr. Cooley’s book, Accounting For The Dark (Carnegie Mellon University Press, Feb 2024) may be purchased through our website or in-person during the event. Ms. Holler’s book How To Leave Your Family (Finishing Line Press, Feb 2024) may be purchased by calling or emailing the store or in-person during the event. More about the event here.
Accounting For the Dark: A poet wrestles with faith and loss post-pandemic. In these poems, Peter Cooley encounters both the political realities of loss through the pandemic in New Orleans and personal loss through the deaths of family members and friends. Death is a constant in this book of elegies, but the redemptive power of representation is persistent as this poet of faith memorializes imagined and lived experiences.
How To Leave Your Family, inspects the idea of family, the creation and destruction of it, and what being part of one really means. The book poetically and speculatively retraces the life story of Holler’s late grandmother-who grows up in Mississippi, escapes an abusive relationship, and flees to Georgia, only to leave her two children behind-and the mass of folklore that has always surrounded her. Holler’s poems follow the aftermath of this story and pick up the pieces her grandmother left behind, and together, ultimately taking the shape of a multigenerational, coming-of-self narrative of witness.
Peter Cooley: originally from the Midwest, I have lived over half my life in New Orleans, where I was Director of Creative Writing for forty-two years at Tulane University. The author of twelve books of poetry, I was Louisiana Poet Laureate from 2015-2017.
MAEVE HOLLER is an editor, writer, poet, and educator. In 2020, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Miami, where, as a Michener Fellow, she taught creative writing and English composition courses. In 2017, she received her BA in English and Gender & Sexuality Studies from Tulane University in New Orleans.
Maeve’s writing, which focuses on depicting working-class experiences and retelling familial folklore, has appeared or is forthcoming in The Boiler Journal, Leveler, Scalawag, The Cardiff Review, Wildness, Mantra Review, Lotus-Eater Magazine, and elsewhere. Her full-length poetry manuscript, HOW TO LEAVE YOUR FAMILY, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2024, and was awarded GASHER Journal’s First Book Scholarship in 2019. Maeve is the recipient of the 2020 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for her poem, “SELF PORTRAIT AS BLACK HOLE,” and was most recently nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize by poet and contributing editor, Holly Iglesias.
For the past 8 years, Maeve has served in editorial, communications, copywriting, and marketing roles for a variety of organizations. Maeve currently works as a Communications Manager for World Coffee Research and lives in New Orleans, LA.