Letter to False Gods by Autumn H. Thomas
Autumn H. Thomas is an emerging writer from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. After graduating with a bachelor’s in English Literature from Hollins University, they spent a year in Arizona working as a professional cowgirl. Since then, they enrolled in Temple University and is an MFA candidate '27 and teaching assistant. Autumn now lives in Philadelphia, practicing the art of noticing. Their single poems have been published in Skipjack Review, Cleaver Magazine, Belt Review, and others.
advanced praise for Letters to False Gods:
Intimate, fierce, and reveling in the natural world, Letters to False Gods invites us to remember without turning away. Written in four parts—Budding, Flowering, Fruiting, and Nature/God—Autumn H. Thomas’s debut chapbook concentrates lyrical language and vivid imagery into a meditation on identity and coming of age. Leaning into life’s messy particulars, Thomas excavates the brittle and tender terrain of first love and fresh grief while honoring the intricacies of bullfrogs, birds, biomes, and our own fragile bodies. I read these poems with wonder, recognition, and appreciation for the close attention Thomas gives to the world that surrounds us.
Meighan L. Sharp, author of Effusive Greetings to Friends
Letters to False Gods opens with a punch, and lucky for us, they never stop coming. Autumn’s debut wraps its fist around language, delivering lines with the gritty, girly power of a blood- soaked hand wrapped around a hot pink lighter. Letters to False Gods takes us through “the labyrinth of childhood”, a “dappled adolescence”, and into an adulthood, in the same way that it takes us through Virginia fields, into a hairdresser’s chair, and out of the eremozoic age — with painstaking consideration, overwhelming devotion, and the ability to see beyond the mundane and into the truly spectacular. Autumn’s poetry smacks into the world of pop culture as effortlessly as it slithers through the kingdom of nature — her language grabbing you and washing over you and holding you to the page with each and every line. Letters to False Gods is a collection that you will find yourself reaching for over and over again — just be sure to dodge the punch.
- Olivia Piper, Author of THE BELIEVER, Owner of Courtney’s Bookshop