Kaveh Akbar

"'The struggle from late youth on, with and without God, agony, narcotics and love is a torment rarely recorded with such sustained eloquence and passion as you will find in this collection.' -Fanny Howe. This highly-anticipated debut boldly confronts addiction and courses the strenuous path of recovery, beginning in the wilds of the mind. Poems confront craving, control, the constant battle of alcoholism and sobriety, and the questioning of the self and its instincts within the context of this never-ending fight. From 'Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before': Sometimes you just have to leave whatever's real to you, you have to clomp through fields and kick the caps off all the toadstools. Sometimes you have to march all the way to Galilee or the literal foot of God himself before you realize you've already passed the place where you were supposed to die. I can no longer remember the being afraid, only that it came to an end. Kaveh Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper. His poems appear recently or soon in The New Yorker, Poetry, APR, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry). The recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently lives and teaches in Florida"--

Nix Monroe is in over his head. He thought he was smart enough to handle the Demons of Foxglove Grove and find his cousin's abuser. The plan was always to get in and get out. Lake, West, and Yejun have a different idea in mind, however, and the more time he spends in their clutches, the more of himself Nix seems to lose. It's not long before he finds himself trapped, permanently bound to the next in line for the throne, with a potential threat to them all lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to pounce. What started as an act pretending to be their boyfriend has escalated into something else. Something inescapable. If that weren't bad enough, a discovery about the precious cousin Nix has come all this way for leaves him shaken and uncertain. Lake is more determined than ever to catch the hacker and secure the crown. West suddenly seems more interested in discovering all the different ways he can make Nix moan. Yejun doesn't know the secret Nix is keeping from him. With only a couple of weeks left before the Night of the Nightshade, Nix and the Demons are running out of time to identify the threat. When it starts to seem like none of the people around him can be trusted aside from them, things get even more complicated for Nix. Can Nix rely on them like they say? Or is he just another pawn in their game?