ELIZABETH LINDSEY ROGERS is the author of the poetry collections The Tilt Torn Away from the Seasons and Chord Box. Her essays have appeared in Missouri Review, The Rumpus, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. Born and raised in North Carolina, she is an assistant professor at Oberlin College and leads the Writers in the Schools program in Oberlin, Ohio.

"A gorgeous memoir-in-essays and a coming-of-age, Rogers situates her story in personal and global history, the broader shift of queer consciousness and the intimacy of private connections. In a sweeping and impressive range of focus, she wrestles with dynamics of power and performance, love and desire, region and religion, friendship and family, secrecy and exposure. An accomplished musician, poet, and scholar, this book heralds Rogers's gifted voice in the world of essays." --Sarah Gerard, author of Sunshine State

"With powerful, image-driven prose, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers offers us an interrogation of home and belonging, and the many ways in which we seek them. Like all the best essay collections, I didn't feel this was a writer trying to teach me a lesson, to extol knowledge or answers upon her readers; instead, this is a writer who has complex questions of selfhood and society and explores them openly on the page." --Melissa Faliveno, author of Tomboyland: Essays

Named a "Best Queer Book of 2024" by Autostraddle

"With an extraordinary amount of sensory detail and depth woven into every single essay, Rogers' lyric prose illuminates the ways in which her initial freedom from the "suffocating" culture of Guilford County would only be the first in a long series of battles against the often oppressive and exhausting natures of the systems and institutions that govern our lives." --Autostraddle

"Rogers deftly harnesses the powers of language to hold multiple truths at once: the sweetness of childhood and the challenges of growing up queer in the South; the pleasures of art and the painful abuse Rogers experienced at the hands of a trusted music teacher; the joys of marriage and the hard work of long-term partnership." --INDY Week

"Miss Southeast is a book about the inextricable relationship between our internal and external landscapes, about intimacy, power, privilege, and place. It's also, fundamentally, a book about the ways we come to know ourselves: complicated, painful, joyful, and profoundly surprising. This collection was both a pleasure and an education, and I felt recognized inside of it. I'd follow this voice anywhere." --Molly McCully Brown, author of Places I've Taken My Body

Publisher: Curbstone Press

Pub date: 2024-09-15

Length: 216 pages