WHEN WE BECOME WEAVERS: Queer Female Poets on the Midwestern Experience

“What do the writers in this book have in common? The short answer: abuse, beauty, grit, wit, our histories ...”

When We Become Weavers brings together a multitude of voices exploring the many dimensions of the Midwest queer female experience: a land of moderation and extremes, lakes and thunderstorms, tall grass prairie and dance clubs, racism and transphobia, assault and female erotic power. In this volume, 17 poets, familiar and new, share stories you won’t soon forget.

“Lovers of poetry, click your heels together three times and rejoice. Queer female poets of the Midwest have shared the wide-prairie range of their imaginations in Kate Lynn Hibbard’s When We Become Weavers. We may or may not be in Kansas anymore. But read these lines, read between these lines, and enter the clear-eyed, sometimes subtle, sometimes seething, always edifying landscape of these women’s words. Go ahead, let yourself be transported by this tornado of queer female poets. You know how to find your way home.” — Sally Bellerose, author of The Girls Club

“This compelling anthology cuts across conflicting representations of Midwestern women’s lives, accepting everyone, denying no one. In forms as varied as their experiences, these poets uncover their presence in Midwestern history, present urban and rural worlds readers may not expect, and remind us how far acceptance of queer people has come while refusing to ignore the threats that remain. When We Become Weavers puts ‘flyover country’ on a new, entirely different map.” — Michael Walsh, author of The Dirt Riddles

“I think of the Midwest as a place, real and imagined, filled with people who create things. Practical things. Canners, bakers, auto mechanics, and yes, poets. People who labor to create objects—rugs, clothing, casseroles, cars, poems—that are first useful, necessary, and then beautiful. Within all of the poems here is that same sense of necessity, of urgency to create meaning. This collection gathers queer women poets for a quilting bee where many voices are heard in a cacophony of community. What they produce is a new object for us to behold—cloth of experience and imagination that is both queer and American.” — Julie R. Enszer, author of Handmade Love

"These anthologies [Among the Leaves and When We Become Weavers] feel ground-breaking, because they provide a loving Midwestern home for queer people. Some of the poets write with nostalgia about the rural homes they left for the city. It's never easy to turn your back completely on the place you grew up, even if you suffered there. . . .The poems in these companion anthologies bring beauty and healing to the so-often ugly and harsh experiences of queer readers in the Midwest. It's heartening at last to hear these voices from the Heartland." — Mary Meriam, for The Gay & Lesbian Review

About the Editor: Kate Lynn Hibbard is the author of Sleeping Upside Down and Sweet Weight. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

ISBN: 978-0-9798816-6-4
110 pages. 6" x 9"
Paperback: $14.95
eBook for your iDevice (iPhone, iPad, etc.): $6.99
eBook for your Kindle: $6.99

Order your copy today!

See also:

Among the Leaves: Queer Male Poets on the Midwestern Experience
Queer & Celtic: On the Irish LGBT Experience
Lincoln Avenue: Chicago Stories
QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology
The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips
At Danceteria and Other Stories
It's Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability
London Skin & Bones: The Finsbury Park Stories
That Was Something: A Novel
Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman
We Are Not Your Metaphor: A Disability Poetry Anthology
Better Davis and Other Stories
CHAPS Poetry Series