Milkweed Books presents: Carey Salerno

Milkweed Books presents Carey Salerno, publisher at Alice James Books and poet, to celebrate her newest collection, The Hungriest Stars. She will be joined by local poet Sarah Ghazal Ali for a reading and conversation, followed by book sales and signing.

ABOUT THE BOOK

With language flush with and supercharged by Eros, Carey Salerno's third book is a poet’s elegy to her uterus, her love letter penned in an overcrowded room to autonomy and desire. Having been debilitated and rendered infertile by endometriosis, endured rounds of infertility treatments that landed her in miscarriage and selective reduction treatments, and suffered a cancer scare that left her body incapable of conceiving, Carey Salerno responds with these maximalist poems. Through them, she dives headfirst into the world with an intense hunger to live to the fullest, to release the shame the she has amassed about her own body and its refusals to function, reflecting on and redefining what it means to be a woman when so much is taken from her. 

ABOUT THE POETS

Carey Salerno is the author of three books of poetry: Shelter, Tributary, and The Hungriest Stars. Her poems have been published in journals and magazines broadly and have recently appeared in Poetry, The Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, and The Harvard Review. She is the recipient of a 2025 Pushcart Prize and a 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Arts Council. Salerno serves as the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books. She also serves as a lecturer in poetry, practical writing, and publishing arts for the University of Maine and is a frequent guest at residencies, and MFA and nontraditional writing programs across the country. Her critical essays and articles about her work as a publisher can be found in places like American Poetry Review, NPR, The New York Times, and other outlets. In 2021, she received the Golden Colophon Award for Independent Paradigm Publishing from CLMP, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, for her leadership and contributions at Alice James Books. In her 18-year tenure at the press, Salerno has selected and edited over one hundred books of poetry.

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award, Julie Suk Award, and California Book Award. A Stadler and Kundiman fellow, Sarah is the poetry editor for West Branch, and an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College. She lives and teaches in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

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