Dzanc Books
212 pages
November 19, 2024
May you braid back the hair of the girl who asks you to; may your lips brush other lips in an almost-kiss; when the chickens are gone, may you sow the coop in arugula; may the fogged-in mountain roads thread through your apocalyptic dreams and the cornbread and beans round your belly; may you always give away the thing you love most, like the dollar-store bracelet, or a picture of the sea.
In this stunning collection of braided essays, Yoke & Feather invites the reader into an exploration of the everyday sacred: blessings for the demolition derby and the public-school lice check, a canoe trip through Boquillas Canyon along the Rio Grande, and a visit to the kitchen of the biblical sisters, Mary and Martha, as they welcome their improbable foster daughter.
Rooted in a rural mountain childhood and threaded with Renaissance painting, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and midlife longing for a partner and child, these essays—both playful and deeply felt—reimagine familiar biblical narratives and chart the connections between ancient myth and contemporary life.
Jessie van Eerden is the author of two essay collections, Yoke & Feather and The Long Weeping, and three novels: Glorybound, My Radio Radio, and Call It Horses which won the 2019 Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, Oxford American, AGNI, Image, New England Review, and other magazines and anthologies. She has been awarded the Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, the Milton Fellowship, and a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Jessie holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and teaches creative writing at Hollins University.