PRAISE FOR VENUS IN RETROGRADE

“Whenever the Planet of Love twirls in reverse, the resultant mayhem leaves us wired and twitchy, heart-shattered, bedeviled and deliciously disturbed. The Mistress Lilley strides resolutely into the chaos, hefting deftly-crafted stanzas that rejigger our staid realities and addict us to the spin. ”
–PATRICIA SMITH author of Incendiary Art

“The braiding of the sublime and the quotidian wends itself throughout and becomes a powerful reckoning of one’s life. Lilley’s voice is steeped in hard-earned lyrical wisdom, one that surveys life with an inter-generational lens.”
–BRIAN TURNER author of My Life as a Foreign Country

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Lilley is a Florida native. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, The Southern Review, Drunken Boat, Saw Palm, Hippocampus, The Florida Review, Sweet, Slipstream, and other journals. Her two chapbooks are Night Windows and Satellite Beach. She is a past winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Award and has held a State of Florida Individual Arts Fellowship. Her MFA is from Stonecoast at University of Southern Maine. She has taught at University of Central Florida and Rollins College, and currently teaches literature and writing at Trinity Preparatory School in central Florida. Susan also served as the city of Orlando’s first Poet Laureate.