Sister unburies how we live when we lose what's loved. The rendering of memory, the violence of remembrance, the nature of nightmares all threaten a constant presence of absence. Yet, amid the ominous landscape of difficult truths and the cacophonous sounds of hurt, Karl's harrowing collection brilliantly crafts a world that shows how memory lives in us, finds the deepest humanity in our bonds to one another beyond the confines of time, and ultimately, asks how we begin to understand it all.

Steven Karl is an American poet, Editor-in-Chief for the online journal, Sink Review, and teaches creative and academic writing at various universities. He is the author of two poetry collections. His most recent book, Sister, was published by Noemi Press in 2016. His poetry and nonfiction have been published in literary journals and magazines such as Jubilat, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Sublevel Magazine, The Tiny, Eleven Eleven, and others.

Born in Philadelphia, PA, Karl has lived in S. Jersey, Eugene, Oregon, Portland, Oregon, NYC, and Miami, FL. He received his MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from the New School and currently lives in Tokyo, Japan with his wife and daughter.

"Sister unburies how we live when we lose what's loved. The rendering of memory, the violence of remembrance, the nature of nightmares all threaten a constant presence of absence. Yet, amid the ominous landscape of difficult truths and the cacophonous sounds of hurt, Karl's harrowing collection brilliantly crafts a world that shows how memory lives in us, finds the deepest humanity in our bonds to one another beyond the confines of time, and ultimately, asks how we begin to understand it all." - Khadija McQueen

"A ritual of grief & a hallucinatory journey through caring, Sister explores the emotions, contexts, & margins of loss. Karl moves from tight-lipped minimalism to expansive talkiness to a fabulism of beasts & insects, building poems out of the imagined landscapes of death, linguistic junk & prayer. He searches for that which poetry always searches, to say the unsayable. Sister is a beautiful book & a sad book & a cathartic book & you need to read it." - Mathias Svalina

"This elegy is black-flagged and purple-tongued. Somewhere between Jodorowsky, Blanchot, and Anthrax, Karl etches cities and mountains cross-cut by grief. I can't know Sister; I won't forget them." - Joe Hall