Molly Johnsen Book Launch: Everything Alive

Join the Pierson Library, The Flying Pig Bookstore & Rootstock Publishing for the launch of Molly Johnsen’s debut poetry collection: Everything Alive. With desperate longing, raw vulnerability and surprising humor, the collection confronts trauma and disability like long-lost relatives. Johnsen relies on the power and shortcomings of language to highlight the ways “we are manhandled by mortality.” From a therapist’s office to a cave in Italy, to the raspberry patch in her childhood backyard, the borders of the material world switch from roadblocks to entryways and back. Johnsen’s work is grounded in precise imagery and keen observation, with cycles of family, trauma, and language at its heart. For this exciting launch, the poet will be joined in conversation with birth doula, Sarah Howe. Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event.