It is with great pleasure and barely-contained excitement that we bring you news of next year’s poetry offerings! Trouble Department’s poetry catalog will be shining ever bigger and brighter with two more titles hitting shelves in 2023. Both books have exact release dates yet to be determined, but will most likely be released in March and May respectively.
Our first book of 2023 will be Keep My Course True and Other Flights of Dark Fancy by Gerri Leen, and we’re chomping at the bit to collect so much of the author’s amazing work in one place. This ambitious, full-length collection is a many-tiered cake boasting a variety of rich and decadent flavors, from Sexton-esque work based on classic fairy tales, to delirious visions of painting with pigments from other worlds.
Gerri Leen is a Pushcart- and Rhysling-nominated poet from Northern Virginia who’s into horse racing, tea, collecting encaustic art and raku pottery, and making weird one-pan meals. She has poetry published or accepted by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Dark Matter, Dreams & Nightmares, and others. She also writes fiction in many genres (as Gerri Leen for speculative and mainstream, and Kim Strattford for romance) and is a member of HWA and SFWA. Visit gerrileen.com to see what she’s been up to.
Our second poetry release of 2023 will be Crossing the Chasm, a chapbook by Nicole Bloomfield. This exciting debut by an up-and-coming Hong Kong poet deals in both lavish narrative detail, and introspection as quiet and deep as the title implies. In this collection you’ll find a soundtrack for modern metropolitan life, with a smooth voice that crosses almost effortlessly between wonder and sorrow, restlessness and stillness.
Nicole Bloomfield (she/her) is a Hong Kong teen writer who has been published in 19+ publications. She has been a finalist for Hong Kong Young Writers Award; an intern at Young Post; worked for an international video games company; been published in the top 30 and a publication with over 108K followers on Medium; and taken the John Hopkins Talented Youth English program. One of her works has been praised by the New Yorker, and another has won the Renee Duke Youth Award. When she’s not giving interviews or creative writing workshops, she likes playing piano, running, reading, and voice acting.
