Sudden Seances - by Michelle Awad (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

For women learning to turn their ghosts into power.

Sudden Seances conjures a world where memory hums like a spirit in the walls. It is a collection about loss, grief, and yearning--but at its core, it is about the haunting nature of the human experience. These poems call out beyond the veil, traversing the countless everyday rituals we use to summon the dead--whether through memories, objects, or the quiet ache of longing for something that's long been lost.

Delving into all that's said and unsaid between hello and goodbye, Sudden Seances explores the ways we continue to reach out long after a connection has closed. Awad's poems linger in the spaces where the living and the remembered overlap, where ghosts--both literal and emotional--refuse to fade. Through ruminations on nostalgia, grief, and identity, this collection reflects on how the past never truly lets us go, and how we, too, are often unwilling to let what's gone stay buried.

Review Quotes

"Michelle Awad is a poet unafraid of exposure, as seen in her willingness to be startlingly personal. Every poem in Sudden Seances feels animated by the belief that no memory is too embarrassing, no longing too obsessive, no grief too complicated to examine under bright light." -- Alicia Cook, author of Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back

"Each poem in Michelle Awad's Sudden Seances is an incantation. The true magic of Sudden Seances is its ability to prove that we are never, truly alone in our experiences." -- Ari B. Cofer, author of paper girl and the knives that made her

"In this engrossing collection of poems, Michelle Awad weaves a detailed tapestry of nostalgia and yearning, alchemizing memories and then reclaiming them. To read this book is to enter a world where every frightening shadow is given time to dance in the sun; I could've stayed in it forever." -- Cailtin Conlon, author of Burning the Ghost Light and The Surrender Theory

"Sexy, nostalgic, & haunted with hope, Sudden Seances is an ode to '90s girlhood & 90% humidity. It is biting in its self-awareness without ever tipping into self-indulgence. The container of the poem becomes a haunted house, then a cabinet of curiosities, then a shrine to the selves we used to be." -- Topaz Winters, author of So, Stranger and Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing

"Sudden Seances feels like a coven welcoming you in. Each poem is a spell, lines of magic that are both warmly familiar and excitingly new." -- L.E. Bowman, author of Shapeshifter and What I Learned from the Trees

"Awad puts a magnifying glass to the ache of our insecurities, the weight of grief, the vulnerability of yearning, and her depiction of girlhood is so spot on it almost hurts. This is a raw and accurate portrait of how love haunts you -- how it stays, how it shapes you long after it's gone." -- Raquel Franco, author of I'll Cry If I Want To

About the Author

Michelle Awad (she/her) is a poet, occasional novelist, and dedicated observer of the everyday, convinced that poetry can be found anywhere--provided one looks closely enough. Her work often explores themes of nostalgia, memory, and the unseen, tracing the ghosts and emotional detritus that shape the human experience. She is the author of the debut collection Soul Trash, Space Garbage and the chapbook Poems for the Apocalypse. Awad resides in New Orleans, where she can often be found enjoying a gin and tonic on an ironwork balcony or seeking insight from readers in Jackson Square.