Kendra Leonard
GRAB
Kendra Preston Leonard’s GRAB is part of our 2023 chapbook series sponsored by a grant from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.
Author Interview
Read an interview with Dr. Leonard about the book at Interstellar Flight Magazine.
Get Your Copy!
The book is available on Amazon.
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Awards
Nominated for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association’s 2024 Elgin Awards.
Reviews
I can count with the bones in one of my hands the number of times I’ve been haunted by a collection of poetry, I mean actually visited and revisited by words strung together so well, tales crafted so exquisitely, they refuse to let me go. Kendra Preston Leonard’s new collection, GRAB, is one of those books. Each poem builds myth line by line, linking us to ancient truths, mapmaking to lead us forward into our future. There are bestiaries of natural wonders here complete with deer and whales and sea lions, and ossuaries full of ghosts come back to demand proper burials, all manners of smoke and scent to cast spells over us. More than all of that, though, Leonard gives us bones and harpies and prophetesses to guide us toward a richer understanding of this life, one filled with incredible depth of feeling and an almost holy respect for the passage of time. These poems, this poet, will stick to you like a shadow. And I could not be more grateful for them.
Dr. Jack B. Bedell, Ghost Forest, Against the Woods' Dark Trunks, Poet Laureate of Louisiana, 2017 - 2019
This dark collection holds well to its macabre themes: children and brides die, hearts break, ghosts lurk about, witches and sorcerers work magic, spells are given, and enchantment or insanity ensues. These words will hold you spellbound.
d. ellis phelps, Purifying Wind
Review Copies
To review the book for your publication or blog, please email us at info@ogre.red and we’d be happy to send along a free PDF review copy.
About the Author
Kendra Preston Leonard writes about music, movies, gorgons, werewolves, Shakespeare, feminism, nature, ghosts, disability, drama, race, paleontologists, and much more.
Her first chapbook, Making Mythology, was published in 2020 by Louisiana Literature Press.
Her novella in verse Protectress – a sequel to the Medusa myth – was published by Unsolicited Press in 2022.
Trained as a musicologist, she has written numerous scholarly books in addition to poetry, plays, lyrics, and libretti.
Kendra has also published poetry with us in Issue 7, April 2022.
About the Artist
Sara Maino is an Italian audio-visual artist, educator, poet and performer, author, and film and theatre director. She studied at the University of Trento, Faculty of Philosophy.
She is the author of the novel Quaderno armeno. Hotel Praha, Yerevan, published by Nous Editrice Catania (Italy 2023) about her journey to Armenia for research into liturgical chants.
She is also the creator of documentary films produced by Autonomous Province of Trento (United States 2011), ethnomusicologist Renato Morelli (Sardinia 2014; Georgia 2017), and Lutva Association of Pescara (Bosnia-Herzegovina 2016).
She is the winner of Lucca Video Contest with the short art film cuoredilago in 2011 and won the best photography award for the poetry-inspired film “Elegia marina” at RNAB Brazil Film Festival 2021.
Sara has also published art with us in Issue 16, February 2023.
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