Thieves in the Afterlife

By Kendra DeColo

Kendra DeColo's award winning debut, Thieves in the Afterlife, explores the ambiguities of sexuality and gender, refusing to settle for easy answers or simple explanations. Whether in a strip club or a prison these poems weave together an array of personae, celebrating the profane while taking apart tropes and cultural signifiers to expose the human pulse underneath. Part battle cry and part striptease, Thieves in the Afterlife targets the culture of commoditization and violence, articulating the pain, joy, and bravery needed to resist categorization in what Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize judge, Yusef Komunyakaa, calls “a hardcore reckoning.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Saturnalia Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781625173638

Kendra DeColo

Kendra DeColo is the author of three poetry collections: I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World (BOA Editions, 2021), My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016), and Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia Books, 2014), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2013 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of a 2019 Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has received awards and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Millay Colony, Split this Rock, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House, Waxwing, Los Angeles Review, Bitch Magazine, VIDA, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Vanderbilt University. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

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