Synopsis
Melody S. Gee's The Convert's Heart is Good to Eat meets at the intersection of cultural and spiritual identity, culminating in a set of harrowing poems that investigates how belief defines us.
This powerful collection from Melody S. Gee signals a new voice in poetry that grapples with faith and identity. These poems ask challenging questions about the role that belief plays in one's perception of themselves.
The Convert's Heart is Good to Eat investigates Gee's own beliefs in intimate and profound ways. What does being Catholic mean in a modern world? What does that belief system look like as an adult convert?
Additionally, Gee conveys important truths in these poems about the tension between her Asian American heritage and her newfound spirituality.
Readers looking for modern poems about faith and self will find a new favorite in The Convert's Heart is Good to Eat.
This collection also features a bespoke interview at the end, delving into discussions about craft, influences, and the writer's own experiences that inspired their work.
About the Authors
Melody S. Gee is the author of The Dead in Daylight (Cooper Dillon Books, 2016) and Each Crumbling House (Perugia Press, 2010), winner of the Perugia Press Prize. She is the recipient of Kundiman poetry and fiction fellowships, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and the Robert Watson Literary Prize. Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in Commonweal Magazine, Blood Orange Review, Lantern Review, and The Rappahannock Review. She is a freelance writer and editor living in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband and daughters.
Traci Brimhall is a university distinguished professor of creative writing and narrative medicine at Kansas State University, as well as the 2025 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim. She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). Her nonfiction debut, The Grief Artist, will be published by Sarabande Books in 2026.Known for her poems that often marry the ordinary with the surreal, Brimhall's work has appeared widely in journals and magazines such as The New Yorker, Orion, The New Republic, Poetry, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. Through fellowships with the National Endowment of the Arts, National Park Service, and Academy of American Poets she's taught writing workshops in farm schools, art museums, libraries, medical communities, and the outdoors. She's also received a Karnes Fellowships through Purdue Library's Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart.She is the current poet laureate of Kansas, where her initiatives have centered on uniting the state's agricultural roots with the literary arts. Through poetry cookbooks, food-based mad lib poems, and bringing poetry to the State Fair, her literary arts advocacy seeks ways to bring the nourishment of language to all Kansans.
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