Happy Book Birthday to Dream Rooms by River Halen!
Today marks the official release of Dream Rooms by River Halen! Read on to learn all about this genre-bending addition to our Essais Series.
Happy Book Birthday to Dream Rooms by River Halen! Part essay, part poem, part fever dream journal entry, Dream Rooms charts the shifting terrains of gender and genre. This Most Anticipated Poetry Pick from 49th Shelf unravels a worldview, carving out territory for different selves and realities, while challenging those constructs which hem us into defined shapes and categories.
Set in the years that led up to author River Halen coming out as trans, this collection concerns itself with what sits on the surface of daily life, hidden in plain view, hungry for address—what it means to take a stranger’s pet rabbit to the vet in a year of accelerating extinctions, to lose your clothes to a moth infestation then buy a duvet made of fossil fuels, to learn your bookshelf is full of work written by rapists and rape apologists, to consider a birth control device as a narrative about bodies and their possibilities, then pull the string. Deeply queer and trans not only in its content but in its thinking, Dream Rooms invites readers to that place in consciousness where fear and desire, hidden information and common knowledge brush up against each other and are mutually transformed.
Don’t miss this video introduction by River Halen which offers a sneak peek at some of the book’s major themes.
Atwater Poetry Project presents River Halen
Atwater Poetry Project presents the Holiday Book Fair Poetry Showcase, with River Halen (author of Dream Rooms), Prathna Lor, and Trynne Delaney. Presented in partnership with the Association of English language Publishers of Quebec.
Event page here.
Thursday, November 3, 2022
7:00 to 8:00 pm
Atwater Library Adair Auditorium, 1200 Atwater Ave, Westmount, QC
(Use 4023 Tupper St. entrance)
Praise for Dream Rooms:
That’s all for now, dear reader. Please join us again in wishing a very Happy Book Birthday to Dream Rooms by River Halen! Purchase a copy from our online shop or your local independent bookstore today. Happy reading!
