From an award-winning poet comes a stunning new collection exploring lineage and the legacy of survival as seen through the life of her grandmother Alice--a Black woman born in the Jim Crow South--using the King James Bible as a narrative framework.
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When her grandmother died, poet Diamond Forde inherited a well-worn copy of the KJV Bible to remember her by. Borrowing forms, themes, and characters from its pages, Diamond retells the story of her life in a sacred new text: THE BOOK of ALICE.
"As much a restoration as it is a reimagining, a return of Black women to our rightful place as the center of the world and of the Word. These brilliant, breathtaking poems, brimming with intimacies and interrogations, are at once familial and universal. The Book of Alice's cup runneth over with quiet devastations and resistances, across generations and time. This is a book I'll keep close to my heart."
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Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
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Interior Design: Kathryn A. Kenney-Peterson
Paperback, 96 pages
January 20, 2026, ISBN13 978-1-668078-50-2
From an award-winning poet comes a stunning new collection exploring lineage and the legacy of survival as seen through the life of her grandmother Alice--a Black woman born in the Jim Crow South--using the King James Bible as a narrative framework.
​​
When her grandmother died, poet Diamond Forde inherited a well-worn copy of the KJV Bible to remember her by. Borrowing forms, themes, and characters from its pages, Diamond retells the story of her life in a sacred new text: THE BOOK of ALICE.
"As much a restoration as it is a reimagining, a return of Black women to our rightful place as the center of the world and of the Word. These brilliant, breathtaking poems, brimming with intimacies and interrogations, are at once familial and universal. The Book of Alice's cup runneth over with quiet devastations and resistances, across generations and time. This is a book I'll keep close to my heart."
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Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
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​
Interior Design: Kathryn A. Kenney-Peterson
Paperback, 96 pages
January 20, 2026, ISBN13 978-1-668078-50-2
From an award-winning poet comes a stunning new collection exploring lineage and the legacy of survival as seen through the life of her grandmother Alice--a Black woman born in the Jim Crow South--using the King James Bible as a narrative framework.
​​
When her grandmother died, poet Diamond Forde inherited a well-worn copy of the KJV Bible to remember her by. Borrowing forms, themes, and characters from its pages, Diamond retells the story of her life in a sacred new text: THE BOOK of ALICE.
"As much a restoration as it is a reimagining, a return of Black women to our rightful place as the center of the world and of the Word. These brilliant, breathtaking poems, brimming with intimacies and interrogations, are at once familial and universal. The Book of Alice's cup runneth over with quiet devastations and resistances, across generations and time. This is a book I'll keep close to my heart."
​
Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
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Interior Design: Kathryn A. Kenney-Peterson
Paperback, 96 pages
January 20, 2026, ISBN13 978-1-668078-50-2
MOTHER BODY is an intersectional exploration of the trauma and agency held within a body defined by its potential to mother.
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As MOTHER BODY unfolds, it tasks its reader to understand the expected and unexpected manifestations of motherhood, through menstruation and womb work, but also generational, societal, and literary mothering.
With a variety of forms and modes, these poems unpack the experiences of a fat, Black woman's body while also manifesting joy, resistance, and celebration.
"In this rollicking, audacious debut, Diamond Forde celebrates, mourns and redefines the journey of the fat girl through a landscape fixed on her disappearance and destruction. Forde brands this groundbreaking work with a subversive, self-assertive signature fixed unerringly on its target--anyone and everyone who refuses to recognize the fat girl for the wonder she truly is."
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Patricia Smith, author of Unshuttered
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Cover Art: Ren Buchness
Cover & Interior Art: Robin Vuchnich
Interior Illustrations: Diana Kitthajaroenchai
Paperback, 80 pages
March 15, 2021, ISBN 978-1-947817-24-1
