ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kim Noriega is an award-winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, and teacher. She has won the San Miguel Literary Sala Flash Nonfiction Prize and has been a finalist for both the Edna St. Vincent Millay and Joy Harjo Poetry Prizes. Her poem “Heaven, 1963” was featured in former poet laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated column “American Life in Poetry.“ She is the poetry editor of The Poetry Distillery and a teaching artist with The Poetry Barn. She is a certified facilitator of the creative regeneration process and an expert-consultant infamily literacy through the Pacific Library Partnership. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Ernie, and six cats, five of whom were once feral. More at Kimnoriega.com.
ADVANCE PRAISE
“Among the roses that Kim Noriega names, in her first full-length collection of poems, are the bruises that bloom from sexual violence, and the self that blossoms in the aftermath of the effort to love and love again. What strikes me, in so many of these poems, is the speaker’s tenderness toward herself and the hurt people who have hurt her, even as she speaks unflinchingly of addiction, dysfunction, and abuse, even as she speaks herself into radiance.”
—Cecilia Woloch
PRAISE FOR KIM’S CHAPBOOK NAME ME
“These are brave poems that tell us the stories that live underneath the surface of our lives. They show us the vulnerability in a young girl’s world: ‘What does anyone know of the open palm / her small world rests upon?’; the danger in that world: ‘Your hand at the small of my back / your teeth at my throat’; how it is shattered: ‘ he moves his fingers / to your throat /... whispers: / If I squeeze a little harder’; and how it is healed: ‘It was you, beloved, / who taught the trees / my name.’ These are poems that matter.”
—Ellen Bass
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
AIM Higher is a nonprofit press that publishes works that blur boundaries, negate binaries, interrogate, confound, and delight. We endeavor to open portals into unmapped and magical dimensions, and honor intuition and collaboration.