AN EVENING WITH POET ALYSE BENSEL

Highland Books is pleased to host a free event with author Alyse Bensel as she presents her new collection of poetry, Spoil. The event will take place at Canto 34 Coffee Lounge, 114 W. Main Street, Brevard, NC, on Thursday, September 19 at 6:30pm.

In Spoil, Alyse Bensel raises the question of what happens when our relationships and ourselves are compromised when we fail to meet impossible societal standards. These poems interrogate bodily agency under a patriarchal gaze, the damages wreaked by image-obsessed social media, and how chronic pain and reproductive dysfunction distort self-understanding. Through lyrically sensual and texturally rich language, these speakers, from gawky teenagers to a forgetful baker to Mermaid Midge Barbie, yearn and mourn their inevitable transformation over time. In defiance of this destructive impulse, Spoil names and takes into account all of the many lives that could–or could not–be led.

Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things: A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020) and three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the North Carolina mountains, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.

The event is free and open to the public. Highland Books will have Bensel’s book Spoil available for purchase, with a signing at the conclusion of the event.

Highland Books is proud to have been Brevard’s indie bookstore since 1975. They are located at 36 W. Main Street in downtown Brevard. Learn more at highlandbooksonline.com.