All the Parts You Haven't Lost is a hybrid collection of poetry and lyrical prose that navigates a violent nosedive into early motherhood, exploring the depths of identity loss and self-perception outside of what a "good mother" is permitted to discuss. By opening frank conversation about depression, body dysmorphia, obsessive compulsive disorder, addiction, sexuality, familial trauma and female rage, these collected works reject the social norms and silence about postpartum mental health issues and offer raw honesty and healing within the collective experience of becoming a mother.
Erica Hoffmeister is a rambling soul from Southern California who currently lives in Denver where she teaches creative writing and rhetoric. She is the author of two hybrid poetry collections: Lived in Bars (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), and Roots Grew Wild (Kingdoms in the Wild Press, 2019), and considers herself a cross-genre writer with a variety of short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and critical articles published. She's obsessed with pop culture, cross country road trips, and her two daughters, Scout and Lux
"All the Parts You Haven't Lost is a body of inheritance – where generations of women compound into one—compelling doesn't cut it, no, within the fragmentary there is intent to gather and display what Hoffmeister already knows intuitively. She summons us to call upon the ancestors, to lay curled within the 80s era quilt of motherhood; and Hoffmeister knows–has already claimed deep wounds and words within stunning sentences to say: 'This is our maternal tradition, our genetic curse. We'll be buried in the bodies of our mothers when we die, no matter what we've set on fire.' Readers, remember to breathe. This is an absolute dream." - HIllary Leftwich
"In a love letter to motherhood, daughtering, and the threads that connect all of our past and future selves, Erica turns up the boil slowly until we're awash in heredity, generational curses, the tension between astrology and astronomy, and the overwhelming joy of making a body from a body." - Leah Rogin
