22 pages
hand-sewn

signed and numbered in an edition of 50

In her debut chapbook, Sara Shea maps the shifting topography of the American South, where the lush vitality of the Blue Ridge Mountains meets the unsettling encroachment of the Anthropocene. Through a lens that is at once microscopic and celestial, Shea examines the delicate web of the self against a backdrop of catastrophes: historic droughts, solar flares, hurricanes. Drawing inspiration from the precision of Georgia O’Keeffe and the rhythmic chirps of cicadas, Shea explores how shape is a “kind of knowing.” In a Photograph Already Burning is a searing meditation on survival and inheritance.

Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as Student Associate Editor for The Kenyon Review. Shea pursued graduate classes through the Great Smokies Writing Program, UNC Asheville, and Western Carolina University, where she studied under Ron Rash. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Connecticut River Review, Quarterly West, The Key West Love Poetry Anthology, Amsterdam Review, Gaslamp Pulp and Petigru Review. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the New Millennium Poetry Contest judged by UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Shea writes professionally, producing marketing materials for a fine arts gallery in Asheville, NC.

Handmade, Homemade Chapbooks

Browse Our Chapbooks

Jason Gray – Before the Roses Dishevel

Sara Shea – In a Photograph Already Burning