Well-Versed with FSG

Growing up, Roya Marsh was considered “tomboy passing." With an affinity for baggy clothes, cornrows, and bandanas, she came of age in an era when the wide spectrum of gender and sexuality was rarely acknowledged or discussed. She knew she was “different,” her family knew she was “different,” but anything outside of the heteronorm was either disregarded or disparaged.

In her stunning debut, written in protest to an absence of representation, Marsh recalls her early life and the attendant torments of a butch Black woman coming of age in America. In lush, powerful, and vulnerable verses, dayliGht unpacks traumas to unearth truths, revealing a deep well of resilience, a cutting sense of irony, and an astonishing fresh talent. This is a dazzling debut from a necessary new voice, at once a clarion call for stories of Black women and a rebuke of broken notions of sexuality and race.

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“Poetry is not the record of an event—it is an event.” —Robert Lowell Even in times of stillness and physical distance, reading a great poem has the ability to move us, transport us—in other words, poetry will always retain its power to feel, as Lowell says, like an event. At Work in Progress, we’ll be commemorating the art of verse all throughout April to honor National Poetry Month with exclusive features, including original pieces, conversations with poetry luminaries, a podcast produced in tandem with LitHub, and virtual events with poets.

Recordings used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. Music licensed under standard license from Exzel Music Publishing (freemusicpublicdomain.com).

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