https://www.kristinbrace.com/events daily 0.75 2023-02-19 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2023/3/29/body-of-work monthly 0.5 2023-04-29 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2022/4/14/national-poetry-month-reading-with-colleen-alles monthly 0.5 2022-04-08 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2021/9/28/tom-andrews-memorial-reading-jack-ridl-visiting-writers-series monthly 0.5 2021-09-25 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2021/6/25/tgi-the-greatest-indoor-reading-series monthly 0.5 2021-06-08 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2019/11/23/poems-art-each-darkness-inside monthly 0.5 2019-11-04 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/wild-abundance-launch monthly 0.5 2019-07-24 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2019/4/11/the-bookman-poetry-night monthly 0.5 2019-02-23 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2019/3/2/indy-reads-books-poetry-reading monthly 0.5 2019-03-01 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2019/2/11/each-darkness-inside-preslae monthly 0.5 2019-04-15 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/schuler-books-music-2660-28th-street-se-grand-rapids-mi-49512 monthly 0.5 2018-09-30 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2018/9/26/fence-patio-blessed-virgin-reading monthly 0.5 2018-08-27 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2018/5/2/almost-there-presale-party monthly 0.5 2018-04-26 https://www.kristinbrace.com/events/2018/3/20/fence-patio-blessed-virgin-presale monthly 0.5 2018-04-06 https://www.kristinbrace.com/excerpt-from-each-darkness-inside daily 0.75 2019-02-11 https://www.kristinbrace.com/excerpt-from-fence-patio-blessed-virgin daily 0.75 2019-01-21 https://www.kristinbrace.com/toward-the-wild-abundance daily 0.75 2020-05-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1578931517802-X207BSTCFUA5G7URL9K9/Gargoyle%2B-%2BNew%2BVersion%2B3.jpg Toward the Wild Abundance - "Notice that easily missed 'Toward' in the title of Kristin Brace’s elegantly down-to-earth collection. Through her unpretentiously precise language, she is taking us 'toward,' and along the way drawing our attentiveness to all that matters. These poems of the numinous reveal a world vacant of mere theory and speculation. Brace longs for lives where we love wastefully and stand in awe, whether it be before a work by Bonnard, a basil plant, or a clumsily played accordion. In 'A Pomegranate, or a Rhyming Couplet,' the speaker says, 'And this tablecloth / is a garden where I / could lose myself / and maybe find / us.'" —Jack Ridl, author of Saint Peter and the Goldfinch https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1578931341110-QLG2L9QUAQH1I58GQ0G3/Gargoyle+-+New+Version+1.jpg Toward the Wild Abundance - "Kristin Brace’s Toward the Wild Abundance is a painterly book, not just in its evocations of Bonnard, Matisse, and Cassatt, but in the quality of light that threads the poems. It’s an intimate light that 'blurs' and 'whirs,' 'streams' like a ribbon from a chickadee’s beak. The light here goes absent at the mouth of a cave, comes to us in snow light, drips like butter. We might ask, as the speaker of one of these poems does, 'Who tilted the room to let the light spill so?' And does our world really shine back with such beauty? This book says yes, points us toward and toward." —Laura Donnelly, author of Watershed, winner of the 2013 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize https://www.kristinbrace.com/each-darkness-inside daily 0.75 2020-01-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1542490064394-OWTMGISCCGVHO8HT9WM7/Mercury.jpg Each Darkness Inside - "With the ephemeral moments she paints in her chapbook Each Darkness Inside, Kristin Brace transforms everyday objects and places into small, but mighty masterpieces. With her vivid and visceral renderings of the seemingly ordinary … , the poet encapsulates moments, holding the reader in an altered realm of time and space. It is in these moments, tiny raindrops among many, that we are invited to explore a painterly world of love, grief, and what it is to be human.” —Brooke Harris, Poet & Educator https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1542490094813-HUKIPY5DNPYTOLJG8UUF/Mars.jpg Each Darkness Inside - "In Each Darkness Inside, Kristin Brace lovingly offers a field guide to existence. With care and balance, Brace catalogs the joys of life while navigating the traumas of living. She helps us thread the intimate tension between our bodies, language, and the natural world. Each poem blooms and shudders, reminding us that our rapture and sorrow share the same afternoon light.” —Rob Kenagy https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1542490189436-4NEPM7S1XQ2Y1HLVTX0M/Celestial2.jpg Each Darkness Inside - "With poignancy and precision, Each Darkness Inside expertly examines the everyday invisible thing: a childhood memory, a daydream of another place, the lingering effects of illness in the body, "...[a] stranger's radio [playing] softly [on] the other side of the wall." The lasting gift of Brace's insightful poems is this: the reader can't help but start to see the subtle significance of—and to better appreciate—the exterior world around, the interior world within.” —Colleen Alles, author of Induction: Poems for My New Daughter https://www.kristinbrace.com/fence-patio-blessed-virgin daily 0.75 2020-01-14 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1542478404323-033J3NMYA7SPDLC2DX6L/Sahara.jpg Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin - "Kristin Brace's Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin takes us down a loving rabbit hole into the revelation that time and space are indeed a continuum, but not the one we have come to understand. We discover that there are many times and many spaces seamless and occurring at once. Hallucinatory in juxtaposition and structure, the narrator keeps us oriented as we enter this trans-personal history with “the old birds blurring into the new.” –Jack Ridl https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1542478660481-RCSNQC9783MGSBXQN4WM/Archipelago.jpg Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin - "Setting out in a Buick that sails over the prairie, poet Kristin Brace voyages through her grandmother’s “slow winding down of the physical self.” The poems in Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin are heart-brave. They don’t flinch from the hard knock of truth, don’t dip into easy sentiment; rather each accomplished line honors that grandmother’s complex life journey through a keen eye, an ear tuned to the marvelous music of storytelling, and admirable, elegant poetic aptitude." –Kathleen Driskell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1542478869129-L6SHDV2SK3LX2RBGSSTL/Rouge.jpg Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin - Like her grandmother’s ‘bushes dense / with raspberries,' Kristin Brace’s twin-twining threads of alternating poems in Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin proffer bitter-sweet detail after precise detail—bitter for the inevitable and sometimes heart-breaking changes to family they depict, so sweet for their tender and heartening ways of remembering. Brace is a personal narrator, but in her poet hands, these intimate and interlaced stories celebrate the everyday of us all." –D. R. James https://www.kristinbrace.com/work daily 1.0 2021-06-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1578960249889-7BWODZXBV54QTARW9U4R/IMG-4641.jpg Work - Welcome. Kristin Brace is a writer living in West Michigan. Her small obsessions include books, houseplants, Italy, the scent of tomatoes fresh from the vine, names, peonies at their peak, the Oxford comma, accordion music in a minor key, colors, Lake Michigan in every weather, and kittens in the sun. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1564678798714-062LXM7DX52FZTZDJCJP/TTWA+Cover.jpg Work - Kristin's full-length poetry collection Toward the Wild Abundance was selected for the 2018 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Available from Michigan State University Press and your local indie bookstore. Endorsements and interviews here. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1548695230150-N7CVE5H2T5ASTWB6YCFS/Brace_Kristin_COV.jpg Work - Fence, Patio, Blessed Virgin is a poetry chapbook of a granddaughter's memories woven with narrative drawn from the final years of her grandmother's life. Available from Finishing Line Press or wherever you buy books. Endorsements, radio interviews, and poems here. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5aae7cfb0dbda365460655b1/1548695076912-0Q9KCT8FW4AK4LVBKCVG/BRACE_KRISTIN_EACH_COVER_lm.jpg Work - Exploring the overlooked, the interior, and the unspoken, Kristin’s poetry chapbook Each Darkness Inside is available from your favorite bookstore and Finishing Line Press. Endorsements, radio interviews, and poems here. https://www.kristinbrace.com/psm-2020-contest-poems daily 0.75 2020-11-30 https://www.kristinbrace.com/contact daily 0.75 2021-03-18 https://www.kristinbrace.com/read-me-om daily 0.75 2025-05-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5052176b84aeb45fa5cfcc83/1377097104716-HDI53XJVV0DKZ24A3T68/51e453dee4b06abd3403c22e.png Read Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5052176b84aeb45fa5cfcc83/1377096775448-0L7B4Q54H1VLOGFF1DPR/synthetica+%2820130821%29.jpg Read Me https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5052176b84aeb45fa5cfcc83/1377096507573-1MU42OOOOGIM9URAJ9D9/515c4225e4b0afec1218b21e.png Read Me