Overview

Inaccurate Histories tells the story of a family quick to rage, but who also ""love like (they) burn, blistering,"" who are ""passionate and vivacious"" and violent; grieving and celebrating. The women who make up these poems are made of power and grace. They ""hold the walls of the house up."" ""Matriarchs at the gate"" with ""soft hands"" and hard lines set across the mouth in determination for they know they must ""always be clawing at their dreams."" The men in this collection taught their daughters how to fight for those dreams. Inaccurate Histories is an ode to family, its gifts and its curses. It is a collection of strength and memory, pain and trauma, but at its core-it is a story of love.

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Reviews

""Inaccurate Histories is a rich reckoning with lineage, with life and death and dreams and sacrifice. In this collection, Versella is the empress of her own passion and pain, transforming lifeless fact into living lore."" -Lindsay Lerman, author of I'm From Nowhere and What Are You ""Reading Versella's newest collection is like looking at faded photographs or watching old home movies: the memories and lives are there, but incomplete: damaged and discolored by time and distance. Versella's poems are attempts at making sense of what ghosts stir behind that damage, primarily through the lives of generations of Italian and Italian-American women. Here, women are the keepers of domestic spaces and lineages, but more importantly, of secret knowledge. They are the mystics, the quiet backbones of families-they are the ones who endure, who remain. In these stunning poems, Versella traces the lives of women across time and continents, questioning what it means to be the ancestor of immigrants, to carry not only their blood, but their names-or lack thereof. Probing the histories and bloodlines of these women, Versella crafts a transporting narrative that will draw you in with its femininity that is as dark as it is divine."" -Raye Hendrix, author of What Good is Heaven

Author Information

Alise Versella is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net-nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society. She is the author of the full-length collection ""When Wolves Become Birds"" (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2021), as well as the chapbooks ""A Psalm for the Weary"" (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), ""Tender is the Body"" (Querencia Press, 2023), and ""Maenads of the 21st Century"" (Dancing Girl Press, 2023).Her work has been widely published in print journals and anthologies, including The Opiate, Luna Arcana, Perpetual Doom's Navigation to Nowhere: In Search of Paris, Texas, The Poetry Bus, White Stag Journal, Press Pause Press, and Ellipsis...Literature and Art Journal. In 2021, she was longlisted for the Sappho Prize for Poetry by Palette Poetry.Versella has collaborated with Women's Spiritual Poetry and is a proud contributor to the Lunar Codex. She has performed extensively across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the New York City Poetry Festival, and online via Zoom. Additionally, she has taught ""Poetry as Power"" workshops in libraries and schools.

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