At turns humorous and heartbreaking, The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named explores in both formal and free verse what it means to die, which is to say, also, what it means to live. In this collection, Sealey displays an exquisite sense of the lyric, as well as an acute political awareness. Never heavy-handed or dogmatic, the poems included in this slim volume excavate the shadows of both personal and collective memory and are, at all points, relentless. To quote the poet herself, here is a debut as luminous and unforgiving “”as the unsparing light at tunnel’s end.”

Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She earned an MLA in Africana studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. Sealey is the author of the collections Ordinary Beast (2017), a finalist for the PEN Open Book and Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named (2016), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize.

1 – The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named: Poems – Nicole Sealey (Northwestern University Press, 2016)

2 – Fourteen Poems (Volume 6) – Nancy Bradberry, Ted Wojtasik, Madge McKeithen, Christine Mitchell (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015)

3 – Present Conditions – Joseph Massey (Hollyridge Press, 2018)

4 – Some Girls Survive on Their Sorcery Alone – Thiahera Nurse and Reginald Gibbons (Northwestern University Press, 2019)

5 – Next Hood Over – Hazel The Aura, Sean Hanrahan, Josh Martin (Toho Publishing, 2020)

6 – The Blue Nib Chapbook 5 – Adam Levon, Ross McCague, Teresa Godfrey (The Blue Nib, 2020)

7 – Maybe, someday – Becca Noel (Independently published)

8 – The Maze To My Heart – Alexis M Romo (Alexis Monique Romo, 2020)

9 – Puro Amor  – Sandra Cisneros (Sarabande Books, 2018)

10 – Midnight Double Feature – Kenneth M Cale (Independently published, 2020)