Maggie Nelson is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. She first published Bluets with Wave Books in 2009 - in 2015, the book was named by Bookforum one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years; in 2024, it was adapted into an acclaimed play staged at the Royal Court Theater of London. Her other nonfiction titles include Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024), On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021; named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts (2015; named by the New York Times one of the top 100 books of the 21st Century), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011; named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial (2007), and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (2007), and Jane: A Murder (2005). A 2016 MacArthur "genius" fellow, she currently teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles. Her newest book, Pathemata, or The Story of My Mouth, is forthcoming with Wave in April 2025.

Previous Praise

Bluets

Balancing pathos with philosophy, she created a new kind of classicism, queer in content but elegant, almost cool in shape.
Hilton Als, The New Yorker

It's an impossible book to describe without simply handing it to you; it is, hackneyed as it is to say, a book to be experienced. I can only report that I am reading it again and again, that the resonances between the (seemingly) disparate propositions are startling and emotional, that I suspect your reaction will be different and also quite wonderful.
Peter Rock, The Rumpus

Nelson's expressive style springs from her subject as much as the content, in turn, inflects her vocabulary, tone and structure. Seeking such reciprocity--no less an ideal than, say, "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"--may radically redefine poetry, as it increasingly becomes the genre that is not one.
Albert Mobilio, Bookforum

Publisher: Wave Books

Pub date: 2025-04-01

Length: 80 pages