Purging the Monsters

A collection of horrorku from Julie Bloss Kelsey.

"Julie Bloss Kelsey beautifully expands the definition of horrorku with Purging the Monsters. While there are traditional genre elements sprinkled and used evocatively throughout, these poems primarily deal with and evoke the feeling of horror rather than playing on familiar tropes. In many ways, this could be a companion volume to her book Grasping the Fading Light: A Journey Through PTSD. Here, too, Kelsey writes fearlessly about trauma, abuse, self-harm, and other everyday terrors-in short, the stuff that truly frightens us. This is the kind of personal, soul-stirring, gut-wrenching horror I love best. Read if you dare!"

Thomas Tilton

author, Rust on the Saw Teeth (Cuttlefish Books)

"If you're looking for something other than anxiety to take your breath away, Julie Bloss Kelsey's poems will have you

shaking the shag carpet dust off your high school Ouija board. If Silence of the Lambs has you checking your skin's expiration date, if brutal honesty makes you scream like Edvard Munch's painting, then Kelsey's dark humor, poignant, and uncomfortable writing will give you the permission you've always needed to contact your own monsters within."

Peg Cherrin-Myers

Touchstone Award-winning poet