Yearnings

While Harper’s collection may seem quiet and meditative at first glance, the crux of Yearnings lies in the sharp and needful undercurrent the title suggests. With tight, concise lines and grounded imagery that leads you by the hand into its dark and hungry heart, this is a book for those who feel deeply, love wholly, and see the world in signs, in poems. We have all wanted, all needed, all hoped-Harper’s universality is only strengthened by her incisive and singular storytelling. Yearnings gives all of itself, word count be damned.

-Devon Bohm, author of the poetry collection Careful Cartography

Stephanie Harper’s rhetorically deft poems are written with the emotional sincerity of a poet who has dared to love with unnerving vulnerability. At once heartbreaking and illuminating, these poems explore the blurry boundaries of the paradoxically beautiful and broken, the reserved and ravenous, and the novel and nostalgic relationships we both fear and crave. Let this deceptively small collection be the forthcoming generation’s comprehensive guide through and authenticator of modern love.

-T.E. Hahn, author of the Kirkus Star Awarded Novel Open My Eyes

Stephanie Harper is the author of the novel Wesley Yorstead Goes Outside, winner of the 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, as well as a finalist for the Colorado Book Awards and the National Indie Excellence Awards. She is also the author of the poetry collection Sermon Series, previously published by Finishing Line Press in 2017. Her narrative nonfiction work can be found in a number of publications, including HelloGiggles, HuffPost, Living Lutheran, Healthline, and more. She often writes about chronic illness and spirituality.