Frontier Poetry Virtual Chapbook Launch Party

Join us Wednesday, November 5th, 2025 from 7:00 - 8:00 CST!

In the meantime, you can order Explaining a Dress through our partner Red Mare Press

Come celebrate the release of Jessie Keary's Debut Chapbook Explaining a Dress

Selected by Guest Judge Nancy Miller Gomez as the winner of Frontier Poetry’s 2024 Debut Chapbook Prize, Explaining a Dress is both a recollection and an homage to the forgotten history of trans women. Rooted in the precise craft of erasure poetry, these pieces resonate with quiet protest, sophisticated confidence, and untold violences of the past. In Keary’s work, the clothing of trans women—a white scarf, a gingham gown, silk shirts—becomes an emblem of resistance, tenderness, and the radical beauty of being seen.

Join us for an evening of celebration featuring readings from Guest Judge Nancy Miller Gomez, Debut Chapbook Prize Winner Jessie Keary, and three poets personally invited by Keary: Evelyn Berry, Robin Gow, and Adhi Kona! We also hope to leave time for a brief Q&A with the authors.

Following this launch, you can download and read the whole chapbook for free on Frontier Poetry.

This event will be held virtually over Zoom. This event is free and open to everyone interested, but please register in advance to receive the link by clicking the submit button below.

We’ll also be hosting a giveaway of a physical copy of Explaining a Dress during the launch party!

About the Poets:

Jessie Keary is a queer, trans, Midwestern writer with too many hobbies. For the last few years, he’s been writing a collection of erasure poetry using archived, US newspaper articles about transgender people from the 1860s-1960s. The language of gender identity has evolved, which is often weaponized, as if the experience of being trans is as new as some of the language. Through poetry, Jessie strives to honor the gender-expansive people who have always existed and always will. Their poetry can also be found in Transmasculine Poetics (Sundress Publications), Sweeter Voices Still (Belt Publishing), and various corners of the internet.

Nancy Miller Gomez is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books) and Punishment (Rattle Chapbook Series). She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Adroit Journal, LitHub, Shenandoah, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, River Styx, Verse Daily, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology and was awarded a fellowship from the Jentel Foundation. Gomez co-founded an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails, the Juvenile Hall, and as part of Cornell University’s Prison Education Program. She earned a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego, a J.D. from the University of San Diego, a Master in Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University, and has worked as an attorney and a TV producer. Originally from Kansas, she now lives with her family in Northern California. As the Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz, she is working with the County Office of Education to create a program to offer poetry workshops to youth throughout the county.

Evelyn Berry (she/her) is the trans, Southern author of Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2024) and the chapbook Buggery (Bateau Press, 2020). Her chapbook T4T is forthcoming from Small Harbor Press in 2026. She is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship and South Carolina Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for Poetry. She is the winner of the BOOM Chapbook Prize, Button Poetry Short Form Contest, Dr. Linda Veldheer Memorial Prize, KAKALAK Poetry Prize, Emrys Poetry Prize, Broad River Prize for Prose, and other honors. She lives in Columbia, SC with her partners and their pets.

Robin Gow (it/fae/he & él y elle) is a Lambda Literary award-winning poet and community educator. It is the author of poetry collections and young-adult and middle-grade novels. His titles include Lanternfly August, Dear Mothman, and A Million Quiet Revolutions, earning starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, School Library Journal, and more.

Adhi Kona (he/him) is a mostly unpublished queer, trans and South Asian-American poet who has read his work on stages such as Hugo House’s Lapis Theater, Seattle Town Hall and at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) national convention. He was a member of the 2022-23 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Cohort, and his poetry can be found with the University of Washington's Henry Art Gallery as well as the third and forthcoming fourth editions of Echolalia’s annual print journal at UC Irvine. He is currently a student at UCI working toward degrees in Game Design and Creative Writing, and does research in their English department. He is a competing slam poet in the Orange County/Anaheim/LA areas, loves experimenting with poetic form, and thinks fairy lights are vastly superior to normal ones. If you're reading this, he's very grateful to be here.

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