Winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize
 

"What makes Guinevere in Baltimore work is the sheer brilliance of the individual poems...masterfully crafted, a veritable feast for any lover of words."

– Charles Simic

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"A freakishly brilliant book in its conception, Shelley Puhak’s Guinevere in Baltimore raises the stakes for American poetry of the twenty-first century."

– Cate Marvin

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"Daring and totally distinctive...[Puhak] has found her place and staked her poetic claim."

— Kenyon Review Online
 

"Full of so many surprises and such vivid language... it is in the perfectly allotted proportions of the sexy, the wry, the sharp, and sly, the economic, the local, the corporate, and the mythic that this book shines."

— Baltimore CityPaper

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"This is a dazzling work – bold, brilliant." 

— Meridian

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"A feminist revision that’s sympathetic, rounded, and most importantly, wholly relatable." 

— Inside Higher Ed

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READ sample poems:

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• Letter to An Old Flame  in The Missouri Review

• Two Poems in Kenyon Review Online

• Two Poems in The Normal School

• The Last Meeting in Verse Daily

Winner of the Towson Prize for Literature

"Deeply political and deeply personal, Stalin in Aruba is a startling debut...Puhak has me hooked. This is a poet to keep your eye on!"

—Julianna Baggott

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"Shelley Puhak’s stunning first book of poems is not so much a voyage but a zigzagging from one strange and fascinating port to another: Hitler’s lovers, lady laudanum drinkers, a high-school Proteus, gypsies, Raphael’s portrait of Pope Leo X, a Polish refugee who triples her weight after marriage, and a cemetery of life stories."

—John Surowiecki

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READ sample poems:

• Torch in Alaska Quarterly Review

• The Führer's Girls in Beloit Poetry Journal

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