What We Lost in the Swamp

“What We Lost in the Swamp is a beautiful tribute to what it means to love and what it means when the world tells you how to love (and how lonely that can be.) Chemidlin cleverly akins nature to the human condition and finds healing through this relationship. My inner child felt like she was receiving a warm hug the whole time reading this. I’ll be reading again, but next time barefoot in the grass on a windy day.” — Makenzie Campbell, author of 2am Thoughts“What We Lost in the Swamp is a sincere and glaring look at one’s self—moving from a gentle hand to a firm one when it’s desperately needed. Grant’s ability to write with both ripe, startling imagery and tenderness takes you to places you’ve only visited in your dreams. Between the quiet moments of intimacy and the thrashing about of honest and tangible emotions, there is so much to grasp onto in this book—leaving you with so much to wonder, yet one thing to be certain of: that at its very core, life is good & kind & beautiful.” —William Bortz, author of The Grief We’re Given

Grant Chemidlin is a queer poet and author. He was a finalist for the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award and the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and has had work published in Quarterly West, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and River Heron Review, among others. His newest collection, What We Lost in the Swamp, unpacks his closeted youth, his coming out, and his ongoing journey to becoming unabashedly himself. Grant lives in Los Angeles with his husband and his aloof cat, Teddy.