In her visionary debut collection, Calilfornia poet Kimberly Kralowec explores the intimacy of living in close relationship with extremes of beauty and distress in relation to both the human and non-human creatures around us. Friendship and love play central roles, always in the presence of nature close at hand and observed in remarkable language. Most of all the bold poetic inventiveness and freedom of these poems will carry the reader into unexpected realms. Always carefully observed, always alert to the nuances of language: these poems will carry the reader away.

Kimberly Kralowec is the author of a chapbook of love poems, We retreat into the stillness of our own bones (Tolsun Books, 2022). A California native, she holds an English degree from Pomona College and lives in San Francisco, where she is a practicing lawyer. 

"The author Sean Singer said of the book, 'The voice in The Saplings Think of Us as Young is a Cassandra—she is a prophet and a careful observer of the climate emergency.'" - Deborah Kalb

"Author Jay Deshpande said, 'Kimberly Kralowec's poems haunt in the best of ways, moving through the loved and marked spaces of our lives. The voice is rhapsodic, songlike, but never lulling: at any moment, the torsions of her syntax may pull you into their undertow.'" - Deborah Kalb