“Post-Apocalyptic Valentine” by Linda Watanabe McFerrin will be published by 7.13 Books on Sept. 3.
This new poetry collection by McFerrin, novelist, travel writer and winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, navigates the spaces between depression, humor, and dark revelation. With inspirations as varied as Sylvia Plath and Lenny Bruce, “Post-Apocalyptic Valentine” spans time, space, and even our galaxy in exploration of what it means to love.
McFerrin is the author of two poetry collections and past editor of a popular Northern California guidebook. Her novel “Namako: Sea Cucumber” was named Best Book for the Teen-Age by the New York Public Library. In addition to authoring an award-winning short story collection, “The Hand of Buddha,” she has co-edited 12 anthologies, including the “Hot Flashes” sexy little stories and poems series. Her latest novel, “Dead Love,” was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel.
McFerrin has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama Prize, served as a visiting mentor for the Loft Mentor Series, and been guest faculty at the Oklahoma Arts Institute. A past NEA panelist and juror for the Marin Literary Arts Council and the founder of Left Coast Writers, she has led workshops in Greece, France, Italy, England, Ireland, Central America, Indonesia, Spain and the U.S. and has mentored a long list of accomplished writers and best-selling authors toward publication.
Visit her website: ttps://lwmcferrin.com
Advance praise for “Post-Apocalyptic Valentine”:
“I have loved everything I’ve ever read by Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Her prose and poetry are filled with amazing women, charm, wisdom, and light. She is both soulful and precise, eloquent and full of life.” — Anne Lamott, author of “Bird by Bird” and “Hallelujah, Anyway”
“Haunted by history as well as by present ghosts, ghouls, and goblins, Watanabe’s poems are charged with the force of the great changes we’re facing — as a planet, as a society, and as individuals. And yet their ferocity is tempered with a gracious attention to the delicate details of daily life — these are poems that listen even more loudly than they speak, and that generosity gives this collection its distinctively heart-felt edge — it’s a tour de force of compassion.” — Cole Swensen, author of “And And And,” long-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize
“Linda Watanabe McFerrin can seemingly do anything and has now gifted us with the valentine we so desperately need. A bloody reminder that despite life’s manifold horrors and disappointments, love remains on this dying Earth. A fragile possibility perhaps, but still attainable somehow despite our doomsday hearts.” — Richard Peabody, editor, Gargoyle Magazine
