In Reaching Beyond the Saguaros, a book titled for its beginning roots in the Southwest, contributors write themselves around the globe, connecting pieces of their individual hometowns. Inspired by the seventeenth-century haibun’s concision, imagistic tendencies, and subtle interplay between poetry and prose, this contemporary travelogue features writing by Renée Ashley, Carol Fragale Brill, Letisia Cruz, Walter Cummins, Nina Foxx, R. G. Evans, Racquel Henry, H. L. Hix, Thomas E. Kennedy, Minna Zallman Proctor, and others.

Editor: Heather Lang
Paperback : 68 pages
ISBN-10 : 0997779764
ISBN-13 : 978-0997779769

About the Editor

This year Heather Lang was voted Las Vegas’ Best Local Writer or Poet by the readers of KNPR’s Desert Companion. Heather serves as a World Literature Editor with The Literary Review, and she was recently awarded a Nevada Arts Council artist grant to curate Legs of Tumbleweeds, Wings of Lace: An Anthology of Literature by Nevada Women. Heather holds an MFA in Poetry and a graduate certificate in Literary Translation from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and her poetry and prose have been published by or are forthcoming with The Normal School, Pleiades, and Whiskey Island, among others. Last year Heather was twice interviewed on Nevada Public Radio, and her writing process was on exhibit at the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery. www.heatherlang.cassera.net

Excerpts

“‘You were such a sweet little one,’ she says, clearly not remembering everything. I say nothing, as I’d rather remember this moment, not that one. It moves as you move. A new world map hangs on the wall. The winter sun is bright. Son stands up, takes his own first steps.”
— Mariya Gusev (St. Petersburg, Russia)

“In snow, our rooftop
(daughter dressing like mother)
mimics the mountains.”
— H.L. Hix (Laramie, Wyoming)

“Being from Northern Utah: On a quick drive westward from Utah’s capitol, through beige desert ranges, we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats on the way to a little gambling town. (Possibly for my last time in a long time.) When the wind picked up, we could taste a desert sea blowing through the peaks, and almost see where the earth curves amongst rippling refractions off asphalt and salt. Images to imprint.”
— Ginger Lee Thomason (Layton, Utah)

“Have you seen red leaves
spin rising from the concrete?
Bodies for our ghosts.”
— Tim Lindner (Woodbridge, New Jersey)

“You could never figure out what the obsession was with a Starbucks and a Dunkin Donuts on the same corner, the same way you could never figure out the obsession with the ocean. It’s too big, too deep, too unknowable. It reminds you too much of yourself.”
— Amanda Ramirez (Massapequa, New York)