Necessary Fire - Softcover

Poetry. NECESSARY FIRE, KMA Sullivan's debut collection and winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award, opens a window into the world of a woman who is mother, partner, daughter, and lover. Surprising in the variety of moment, wrenching in detail, grounded in grief and care, this collection moves from the innocence and bravery of a young son coming out in a world set to crush him, to playing hymns so a dying mother can plan her funeral service, to witnessing the breaking of a son who had been abused and abandoned in earlier years and cradling an adopted daughter long enough for her to find her own voice, all the while experiencing the fullness and desire and ebullience that comes from loving others and being loved without limit. NECESSARY FIRE offers a deluge of image and emotion and experience, a deluge that only a heart on fire can survive.

KMA Sullivan is the author of NECESSARY FIRE, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Southern Humanities Review, Forklift, Ohio, The Nervous Breakdown, Gargoyle, diode, and Anti-, among others. Recent essays have appeared in The Rumpus, The Good Men Project, and Nailed. She has been awarded residencies in creative nonfiction and poetry at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Summer Literary Seminars and she is the editor-in-chief of Vinyl Poetry and the publisher at YesYes Books.