Clayre Benzadón, Mia Leonin, Jarrett Moseley, & Caridad Moro-Gronlier

Books & Books is proud to present MOON AS SALTED LEMON by Clayre Benzadón.

Clayre Benzadón’s Moon as Salted Lemon is a queering of form and language which interrogates the intersections of Sephardic Jewish, American, and nonbinary identity.

“This stunning debut collection is a multilingual poetic manifesto that advocates for a fierce scrutiny of the institutions that raise us. These poems remind me that authentic belonging to family, faith, and self is difficult and vital work. Benzadón cracks open words to find new meanings with linguistic agility and a reserve of compassion that leaves me in awe. These poems answer poetry’s highest call—to make and remake language—and as readers we are nourished and revitalized by her dedication”

— Mia Leonin, author of Unraveling the Bed“

Clayre Benzadón (she / they) is a queer (bi /pan) Sephardi-Ashkenazi poet, educator, and activist. Her manuscript, Moon as Salted Lemon was recently named an honorable mention for Miami Book Fair's 2025 Emerging Writer's Fellowship and was chosen as a winner for Driftwood Press's Editor's Pick Poetry Prize. She has been published in places including Jet Fuel Review, Libre, and SWWIM. Find more about her here: https://www.clayrebenzadon.com.

Mia Leonin is the author of four poetry collections: Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child (BkMk Press), Braid, Unraveling the Bed, and Chance Born (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). Leonin has published poetry and creative nonfiction in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Guernica, Indiana Review, Witness, North American Review, and others. She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.

Caridad Moro-Gronlier, born in Los Angeles to Cuban immigrant parents and raised in Miami, is an award-winning poet and longtime educator for Miami Dade Public Schools. She is the author of four poetry collections, including Tortillera (Texas Review Press, 2021), winner of the TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize, and the forthcoming Through the Lens and As to Your Comment (TRP, 2026 & 2027). She is also the editor of Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing (Beacon Press, 2020). Moro-Gronlier serves as senior editor of SWWIM Every Day and poetry curator-at-large for The Betsy Hotel’s Writers Room. Her work has been featured across South Florida’s literary and cultural institutions. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2025 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. In 2025, she was also selected as a judge for the National Book Award. She lives in Miami with her family.

Jarrett Moseley is a bisexual poet from Charlotte NC and Montgomery AL. He is the author of the chapbook Gratitude List (Bull City Press, 2024), and his full length manuscript Rehumanization Litany was an honorable mention for the Vanderbilt University Literary Prize. His poetry has won awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Baltimore Review, earned an honorable mention for the Miami Book Fair’s Emerging Writer Fellowship, and been long listed for the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition. His poems have been published in Ploughshares, POETRY Magazine, AGNI, Poets.org, and elsewhere.

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