About the Book

Brianna Johnson has performed an experiment in destruction: Of forms, of identity, of personae. Her narrator(s) lead a procession toward revelation as ruin. About The Axe Lectures Johnson writes: “Here, Lizzie Borden walks freely. She performs. Talks. Instructs. Condoles with the speaker. Commits atrocities. Here, there is abuse of all kinds. Here, there is a poetic rabble of ghosts and murderers. Here, there is alcohol and addiction. Here, there is a heavily sexualized girlhood. The Axe Lectures kills as much as it mourns.” It is a work of feral grace, sublime and ragged at once, sharing with us the contested self’s constant struggle for reassembly.

Never mention this. Never mention this language.
Never cross this fence. Never tell anyone.

About the Author

Brianna Johnson earned her BFA and MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College where she was mentored by Douglas Martin, Rebecca Brown, Bhanu Kapil, and the late Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, Walter Butts. Her experimental manuscript Fire Sale was published in 2016 as a digital chapbook by Essay Press and her second book Drone Fidelity is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil in 2018. Her was has also been featured in Tarpaulin Sky Magazine. She was invited as a Waves Discussion Series Contribution/Lecturer alongside Maxine Hong Kingston for the 2015 A Room of Her Own Foundation’s retreat for women writers. She lives in Minnesota with a pit bull and some books and acts as an editor with 1913 Press.