In Jessica Rae Bergamino's full-length poetry book Girlhood x A Haunting, the reader carries Nancy Drew's magnifying glass through a lyrically experimental and visually evocative collection that uncovers the traumas lurking in girlhood. Bergamino is a master of the persona poem , speaking through the voice of Nancy Drew and letting the mask slip to expose the real speaker who is experiencing and surviving childhood trauma , and the woman who is trying to understand. In this visually rich collection, artistic representations by cover artist Io Wuerich of personal photographs, and concrete and experimental poetic forms, are utilized to encourage the reader to engage in a deeper investigation of the clues laid down by the speaker. This book is also about the complex task of interrogating memory . It asks how to make sense of childhood memories and the cultural icons underpinning larger understandings of the past and gender by speaking directly to, through, and about Nancy Drew and other characters in her universe. This book, winner of Driftwood Press's Editors' Pick Prize, is for fans of Nancy Drew, for those who have experienced trauma, and for lovers of experimental poetry. Girlhood x A Haunting is a reclamation of the self, and of the stories that become linked to identity. "Poetry cannot best death. But poetry can make the best of it. 'I need an answer. There are no answers, ' wisely writes Mitchell Untch. This talented poet pens a thesaurus of longing with his first book. His lyrics multiply with the nuances of loss: mainly the speaker's twin from AIDS, but also the loss of a platonic Midwestern girlfriend-I've never read of this kind of unseen love in a more definitive manner.... Editors were 'floored' by these poems. Little wonder. Reader, be floored." - Spencer Reece, selected by Louise Glück as winner of the Bakeless Prize, for The Clerks Tale "The focus of Mitchell Untch's stunning debut collection, Memorial with Liminal Space, pivots on leaving, leaving behind, having left, the undiscovered treasure or detritus. With gorgeous imagery, the poet searches for answers where there are none available-in nurses' stations, carnival booths, bodies of lovers, the past. Even Ronnie and Nancy Reagan, turn away in 1980's AID's pandemic blindness. Too much pain. Too much exquisite pain. As he writes in Better Angels II, No one was listening, and we had become fewer and less, / voices like brooms over sidewalks. If reason needs to find its way, the poems in Memorial with Liminal Space unearth a hidden pathway within. El Dorado. Atlantis. Shangri La. Eden." - Laurel Ann Bogen, author of The Misread City andwinner of the Academy of American Poets Award "The gorgeous and moving poems of Mitchell Untch's Memorial with Liminal Space begin by looking back unflinchingly at the suffering and death of his twin brother from the HIV virus. We follow this poet as he laments through the 'corridors of grief.' And as he continues to journey into rooms and scenes from his past, he discovers he can cast a new, prismatic light on those dark moments, turning despair into grace and beauty. Mitchell Untch demonstrates, with his attentiveness to sensual details, how much there is to celebrate and sing: 'the hummingbird's / bright delving, a wakefulness that / cannot be described except that / it lives.'" - Molly Bendall, author of Watchful Jessica Rae Bergamino is the author of UNMANNED (Noemi Press, 2018) as well as chapbooks from dancing girl press and Sundress Publications. She lives in Seattle, Washington. Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press, 2022), and of two chapbooks, Tumbling After (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and North American Review, among others. In 2023, she became the Managing Poetry Editor of Driftwood Press.