*Editor royalties will fund the Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize, which is sponsored by South Florida Poetry Journal and Limp Wrist
Praise for When I Was Straight: A Tribute To Maureen Seaton:
We are thrilled to see this book come into the world, and we are grateful to all the poets for adding their voices to "When I Was Straight." Our mom would have been so proud of this collaboration and honored by this tribute. We hope this book inspires writers to continue sharing their stories and their exquisite truth.
—Jennifer Steele & Emily Blank, Maureen Seaton's daughters
Even though there was never a time in my life when I thought I was straight, I found a deep camaraderie in this wonderful collection. The poems are diverse in style and form, but all speak to the tireless pressures of fitting into a heteronormative world before we are awake to our queerness. Whether lyric or narrative, the poems present poignant and powerful stories. Nicole Tallman who hung onto hope like my mother, / who said she’d rather I had cancer / than be that way. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word gay. And Regie Cabico, Open-mouthed . . . / warbled a high G as the glorious mysteries / bulged under [his] cassock. This is an essential book as we each live through the glorious mysteries and the relentless push back of our culture. Ultimately, it shows us that as Emma Bolden writes, being is being, is beautiful, and enough.
— Subhaga Crystal Bacon, author of Transitory
When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton is poet/editor Dustin Brookshire’s brainchild: invite LGBTQIA+ poets to write poems named for Seaton’s titular classic, and see what happens. This anthology will be a classic in gender studies, as well as poetry. I schooled myself in distance, observes J.D. Islip. What did I know about myself that wasn’t a key in the wrong lock? asks Diamond Forde. Travis Chi Wing Lau recalls, I relearned how to walk/…The upright gait of a man/walking away from himself.” Julie Marie Wade explains, I did not love women as I do now./I loved them with my eyes closed, my back turned. Mel Sherrer states, I knew what women could do/alone together in a room--/or alone in this world. This is an anthology that shows each and every reader that they are not alone in this world.
—Suzanne Cleary, author of The Odds
“When I was straight, I was mostly curved,” writes Kelli Russell Agodon in the first poem of this beautiful tribute/chapbook, When I Was Straight. The line serves as a brilliant metaphor for the sometimes wistful, sometimes fun, sometimes tragic but always compellingly elegiac selection of poems inspired by the late, beloved Maureen Seaton. Seaton’s poem “When I was Straight” (not only the book title, but also the title of every poem within) becomes prompt and confessional for these poets who use the phrase to explore the complications of living in the closet—what it meant to come to terms with who they are as well as who they truly wanted and want to love.
—Beth Gylys, co-author of The Conversation Turns To Wide-Mouth Jars
Dustin Brookshire (he/him) is the author of the chapbooks Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Love Most Of You Too and Never Picked First For Playtime were finalists in the Poetry Chapbook category of the American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Along with poet Julie E. Bloemeke, Dustin is the co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). In 2024, Let Me Say was awarded a Nautilus silver medal and named to the “Books All Georgians Should Read” list by the Georgia Center for the Book. In 2023, Let Me Say This was a finalist in the Poetry Anthologies category of the American Book Fest’s Best Book Awards. The Slowdown, episodes 1109 and 1139, featured poems from Let Me Say This. In September 2024, Let Me Say This inspired the Poetry Well produced Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Tribute Concert at Joe’s Pub.
Dustin is recipient of the 2024 Jon Tribble Editors Fellowship at Poetry by the Sea and a runner up in the 2024 Desert Rat Residency Poetry Contest. In 2021, he was a finalist for the Key West Literary Seminar’s Scotti Merrill Award. Dustin has been twice nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize. In 2023, his work was featured in Georgia Poetry in the Parks.
Dustin’s poetry has been published in numerous journals, and he’s been anthologized in Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on their Muses (Lethe Press, 2012), The Queer South: LGBTQ Writes on the American South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014), Braving the Body (Harbor Anthologies, 2024), and the forthcoming Invisible Strings: 113 Poets respond to the songs of Taylor Swift (Ballantine Books).
More at dustinbrookshire.com.