Dragstripping

Jan Beatty is the author of six previous collections of poetry, most recently The Body Wars and Jackknife: New and Selected Poems, which won the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Prize. Beatty has worked as a waitress, in abortion clinics, and in maximum-security prisons and is professor emerita at Carlow University, where she directed the MFA and creative writing programs and the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops.

Jan Beatty writes at full throttle, a plunge into the self without flinching. These poems are highways, the finish lines smoking with ‘the truth that drags and bitters.’ Stories stripped raw. Brave, honest, death-defying, Beatty’s poetry roars.