Poetry. FRUITLANDS is a probing, intelligent debut collection of poems. "Taking its title from the transcendentalist utopian community founded by Bronson Alcott, FRUITLANDS offers its own visionary perspective on contemporary life. In this collection, cultural work is social innovation, and Kate Colby produces and decomposes identity, history, and narrative through fully engaged aesthetic practice.... Colby maps out exciting possibilities for poetry and other spaces of representation in this stunning debut"--Paul Foster Johnson. "Under pressure, under duress, being a creature of habit caught in the sudden glare of utopic wishfulness, one wakes up in Fruitlands, smuggled inside Colby's intriguing and recombinant language of surveillance, pulled into suggested routes of survival and eco-linguistic liberties in a century you suddenly desire"--Kathleen Fraser.

Author Hometown: PROVIDENCE, RI USA



About the author: Kate Colby is the author of UNBECOMING BEHAVIOR (2008) and THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE (2011), both from Ugly Duckling Presse. Her first title, FRUITLANDS, was selected by Rosmarie Waldrop for a Norma Farber First Book Award in 2007 and published by Litmus Press. Also from Litmus is BEAUPORT (2010). Chapbooks include Rock of Ages (Anadama Press) and A Banner Year (Belladonna), and recent journal publications include NEW AMERICAN WRITING, VANITAS, NO: A JOURNAL OF THE ARTS, EOAGH and Little Red Leaves. She grew up in Massachusetts, interloped in California, and now lives in Providence, RI, where she works as a teacher and copywriter.