New Publications from the NVU Community

This visionary and innovative novel explores the intersections of representation, desire, prophecy, evangelism, and American consumerism, as it tracks the narrative contained in each photo spread of a J. Crew catalogue. The chorus of voices, the models, the photographer, the copywriter, as well its main consumer/observer--a US Senator's wife who is obsessed with breeding and bringing a golden calf from an American farm to Israel to bring on the apocalyptic end times--tell the tale of a world beginning to spin on a different axis. Elizabeth A.I. Powell is the author of The Republic of Self a New Issues First Book in Poetry Prize winner. Her second book of poems, Willy Loman's Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances was a 2016 "Books We Love" in The New Yorker, a Small Press Best Seller, and won the 2015 Anhinga Robert Dana Prize.

Eva Blanchard is settling into her life as a farm owner, student, gardener, and partner to her boyfriend Finn. But change and challenge come quickly when a representative of Gesco, a gas company, moves into Quill Point to arrange for the construction of a pipeline in the middle of Quill Point's prime farm land.While Eva attends classes, continues to renovate her home, and starts her garden, she's asked to build a formidable rebuttal to Gesco's interpretation of the public good. Will it be enough to save her farm? Will her fight work against her by dividing her beloved to town in two? Will she lose lifelong friendships in order to protect what her parents strived so hard to create?Join Eva in Quill Point as she faces the hurdles and joys of living on Vinehart Farm.

In Atomizer, Elizabeth A. I. Powell examines pressing questions of today, from equality and political unrest to the diminishing of democratic ideals, asking if it is even appropriate to write about love in a time seemingly hurtling toward authoritarianism. With honesty and humor, her poems explore fragrance and perfumery as a means of biological and religious seduction. Evoking Whitman?s sentiment that we are all made of the same atoms, Atomizer looks toward an underestimated sense?scent?as a way to decipher the liminal spaces around us. Molecules of perfume create an invisible reality where narratives can unfold and interact, pathways through which Powell addresses issues of materialism, body image, and the physical and psychological contours of emotional relationships. A work of fearless social satire and humorous yet painful truth, Atomizer offers a cultural, political, and sociological account of love in the present moment.