“The only way in is around.”
—Fuse
This explosive debut collection pushes against the limitations of gender roles, race, bodies, and minds, and explores our insignificance and impotence in the universe. The concept of otherness afforded by a marginalized and neurodivergent perspective is brilliantly represented in this collection of poetry.
Rebellion Box is available wherever books are sold.
Buy from Radiant Press.
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Buy anywhere books are sold.
“There’s a willingness to go anywhere and meet anything head-on throughout Hollay Ghadery’s Rebellion Box. Her extraverted poems seek out the very roughest edges of her subjects: parenthood, race, and history, and stay there steadfastly. Beginning in minutiae and building out, the world of the book feels massive; spectacular with sadness and towering with joy."—Jacob McArthur Mooney, Don’t Be Interesting
“Lush and caustic, velvet and thoughtful, multi-genre writer Hollay Ghadery’s debut poetry collection is a study in contrasts, from the most minute domestic dilations of time to the happenings of cosmic heavens. Punctuated by tender yet difficult teachable moments between mother and children, moments whose teachings extend to this grateful reader, Rebellion Box explores the themes of parenthood, identity, death and life cycles, isolation and anxiety, and society’s ongoing expectations of women. It’s an exuberant collection tinged with shadow that delights in sonic language.”
—Margo LaPierre, Washing Off the Racoon Eyes
“In Rebellion Box, Hollay Ghadery takes us on a captivating journey through womanhood, motherhood, a history that is ‘not in the past … taking up/space, everywhere.’ Hold tight to this book, turn its pages, and see the days anew.”
—Jennifer Hosein, A Map of Rain Days
Fantasies are places we briefly visit; we can’t live there. The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.
Widow Fantasies will be released in September 2024 by Gordon Hill Press.
Preorder from Gordon Hill.
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"At turns shocking, funny, and heartbreaking, the stories in Hollay Ghadery’s, Widow Fantasies serve up densely packed miniatures embracing the gothic dysfunctions of the nuclear family. Ghadery’s stories take an unflinching look at family life and explode the myths of a bucolic domestica. These sure-footed stories make for compelling reading."
—Nancy Jo Cullen, author of The Western Alienation Merit Badge and winner of the 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Prize
“Sparking sudden moments of self-recognition, Hollay Ghadery’s Widow Fantasies is an elegiac collection that lays bare, in flashes of longing and desire, the personal and particular. Ghadery’s distinctive blend of wry humour, wit and sensuality sear the pages, filling them with evocative imagery, lyricism and tenderness. Widow Fantasies will take your breath away with its honesty and elegance.”
—Lucy E.M. Black, author The Brickworks
Drawing on her own experiences as a woman of Iranian and British Isle descent, writer Hollay Ghadery dives into conflicts and uncertainty surrounding the bi-racial female body and identity, especially as it butts up against the disparate expectations of each culture. Painfully and at times, reluctantly, Fuse probes and explores the documented prevalence of mental health issues in bi-racial women.
Fuse is the winner of the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir and is available wherever books are sold.
Buy from Guernica Editions.
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Buy from anywhere books are sold.
“I cannot find enough superlatives to describe the savage clarity, the gorgeous language, and the remarkable depth of insight contained in this courageous book. It took my breath away.”
—Diane Schoemperlen, Governor General Award winner and author of This is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications
“I loved Fuse. Ghadery’s writing is raw and beautiful; the tiny details she includes in each story bring you closer to her, and she bravely allows you in. She offers a unique and much-needed perspective on multiraciality and her experience of a bi-cultural life, as well as mental health and addiction, motherhood, and personal growth. I highly recommend it.”
—Rachel Fernandes, The Miramichi Reader
“So, far from being a dispassionate investigation, the narrative became a series of windows into Ghadery’s own personal struggles with these conditions. The effect is informative and often moving. The lack of linearity in the narrative has the effect of immersing the reader more into what she is going through, without the sense that there will be inevitable improvement or change. One feels just the immediacy of the moment. This sometimes leads to a lack of chronological clarity, but in the main it intensifies the reader’s experience.”
—Ottawa Review of Books
