Book Release: Brief & Bleeding Margins by Marissa Forbes

Join us for the release of Marissa Forbes's Brief & Bleeding Margins! 

FREE ADMISSION!

Click "Get Tickets" to RSVP & pre-order your copy to pick up at the event. Limited copies available.

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Featuring

Becca Downs
Tyler Hurula
Saveros Starling
PLUS Open Mic & Dance Party!

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About Brief & Bleeding Margins:

Brief & Bleeding Margins is a raw glimpse into a woman’s journey. “Brief” in the smatterings of autobiographical prose that act as titles to the poems that follow. These poems dive into my opinions on the current political state of mind (BLOODY POLITICS), the girlhood to womanhood transformation (EMERGING, BRIEFLY), my take on the pain and beauty of motherhood (MOTHER’S BLOOD), and finally healing through the creative process (BRIEF META-POESY).  “Bloody” in the sense that I allowed myself to be literal—as a woman: I bleed and my existence holds that truth to be self-evident. Yet, it’s only now I rip into the nitty-gritty of all that blood, of what layers womanhood really holds. Brief & Bleeding Margins is for the hurt and healing of the world, because truly we are just the marks in the margins—the scratches as swirls we make when trying to make our pens work again. We are works in progress and you will see yourself in my brief and bleeding history of now.

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About Marissa Forbes:

Marissa Forbes (she/her) is an artist, writer of all genres, an instructor, and mother. Her chapbook Surviving Peter Pan, was released in June 2023 with Beyond the Veil Press. Forbes’ full-length collection, Bridging the Gap: Poems & E thos for Emily Warren Roebling will be available from Finishing Line Press in October of 2023. Other published poems and short stories can be read on marissaforbes.com and @word_nerd_ris. She is the Managing Editor for Twenty Bellows, a Colorado based literary magazine, was awarded an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing in 2021 and is a Pushcart Nominee for 2023. Forbes has resided all over the country but now lives a colorful life with her two children, Jack and Layne, her father, dog, and cat in Denver, CO.

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Praise for Brief & Bleeding Margins:

Marissa Forbes’ Brief & Bleeding Margins is a fearless collection of poems and lyric essays with titles that take the current trend of long titles and turns it up to 12. She muses on American politics and its attempt to slap laws on the body of anyone who isn’t a cis white man. She asks readers to question what it means to be “sexy” and highlights the way identity (perceived and actual) origamis itself into it all. Forbes calls us to bear witness to everything that being a mother and creative person means in this world. In these pages, there is grit and grief, self-forgiveness and self-love, in spite of a country and government determined to shove us all into broken boxes. Forbes's voice is relatable, unafraid, and puts rhythm to what we’re all thinking. These poems and the clever way Forbes turns a phrase will have you chewing on your own preconceived perceptions long after reading. And most importantly, you will know you’re not alone.

–Sarah Herrin (they/them), Editor-in-Chief of Beyond the Veil Press, author of The Oceanography of Her and Anti-Muse

Throughout Brief & Bleeding Margins Marissa Forbes gifts her readers with a raw and unapologetic coming-to-self tale of a cis-queer-woman whose hyphens were muted by oppression for far too long. This collection is a Matryoshka doll, with each chapter challenging layers and layers of societal expectations thrust upon her over a lifetime. Poem by poem, the reader follows Forbes as she exposes these gender roles and the writer's true essence (new-found, re-discovered, re-claimed) to finally take up space in both life and in honest writing. Once you reach the final doll, there's the poet. And her poetry. You’ll feel the love for her children and her hatred of the patriarchy. Brief & Bleeding Margins is the coming-to-self journey every contemporary woman wonders if she is going through alone. Forbes puts the mirror up, holds your hand, and shows you that you’re not alone.

–Larissa Freitas (she/her), author of Shaped and Viva, by Definition

In Brief & Bleeding Margins Marissa Forbes has an innate ability to create a mindset of affirmations by not keeping silent about her feelings, which rise up from emotions so strongly embedded in her own truth and the truth of many as she becomes their voice, their despair told, their secrets unsilenced by what she sets forth to unbury. She creates a sense of unison and consensus about what many experience but are unable to state as she deftly weaves poems from her concoction of syllables and stories. When we keep silent about wrong-doings and an unequal sense of balance we protect many more voices that keep us down, and Forbes is able to unleash power in her poems that become the contrast to that which is birthed in the future to oppress. The sense that she is that positive, unassailable, and robust force, who is filled with love for humanity is felt strongly in this amazing piece of work. Her collection draws you in and unfolds her wisdom with every single, transforming page.

–Estela Victoria-Cordero (she/her), author of Huitzilopochtli