"There’s something about Katie Marya’s writing in Sugar Work that takes your breath away.
—Jordan Zachary, Southern Review of Books
“Sugar Work demonstrates the astonishing resilience of the writer’s psyche, and makes deeply American poetry out of the strip club, the born-again, the mob trial, the Vegas sun, and most tenderly, of the mother’s body revealed, concealed, loved and examined under the watchful eye of a truly gifted writer. These are rigorous, vivid, memorable poems and this book is a remarkable and important debut.” —Mark Wunderlich
“Today I want to be young like some girl / on Instagram,” Marya writes in this debut collection about a life in which the speaker grew up far too fast, the daughter of a drug addict and an Atlanta stripper who repeatedly questions the meaning of family.” —The New York Times
“Whitman’s image of the crescent moon ‘carry[ing] its own full mother in its belly’ could describe the creative labor in Katie Marya’s debut collection. In Sugar Work, Marya captures the child’s awe while carrying the mother as myth and memory. It’s work, but sweet, the way any blues is sweet. As the child becomes an adult, her mother—imago now—weighs differently on the mind. These poems have a captivating intensity of beauty and care.”
—Gregory Pardlo
“A visionary work of fiction.”
—Cristina Rivera Garza
"One of the most brilliant young writers of our time."
—Marta Aponte Alsina
"A master work capable of redeeming a broken world.”
—Carlos Fonseca
"Animal Spiral takes readers on a ride from the roots of human consciousness to modernity and beyond (…). More than science fiction, Animal Spiral is speculative anarchism with shades of Luisa Capetillo, William Burroughs and Octavia Butler." —Dr. Michael Cuche
Listen to an excerpt of the novel read by Marya and Rosa for Fence’s Streaming Series here.