Beast Body Epic is here!

And can be purchased via AngelHousePress.com

Click here to purchase via Paypal or e-mail me at amanda at angelhousepress dot com for alternative arrangements. Ottawa folk can skip the shipping charge, and purchase from me at readings or we can make other arrangements, if you like.

Click here to listen to my first interview about the book! Thanks to Susan Johnston of CKCU FM’s Friday Special Blend for this and many interview, and all her support of the local arts and culture community.

I’ve been waiting sooooo long to get this book published and share it with you. Back in 2014, I had the pleasure of reading from an early draft when I was inducted into the VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour.Later I read to an audience on Parliament Hill. Each time I have read excerpts from the draft, audience members who have come up to me and told me their own stories of near-death health experiences, or shared their grief for a loved one’s passing or told me about their health issues.

To me the standard narrative of perfect health does not reflect reality. I believe most of us are coping with mental and physical health challenges. Governments don’t treat health as a priority and this is very obvious these days with staff shortages, lack of space in long term care and hospitals, shortages in equipment and supplies, emergency room closures.

I write to let you know that you are not alone. Beast Body Epic is for anyone who’s circled the drain or knows someone who has. The book is about having the shit kicked out of you & surviving.

Some good friends and poets I know wrote these fine notes of praise for the book:

"Amanda Earl’s Beast Body Epic delivers on the promise of its title, fusing visual, lyric, and narrative poems with classical mythology to tell a story that’s part body horror, part fever dream, and part testament of survival from a poet who refuses to die. " Jim Johnstone, author of The King of Terrors

"Beast Body Epic is a hypnotic chronicle of illness and recovery witnessed through a kaleidoscopic looking-glass. Equally tender and brutal with honesty, Earl gives us a beguiling long-form poem about what the body and spirit can endure and how we can survive and thrive. Wisdom crafts this work, a deeply lived understanding that can only come from enduring the unendurable. Luscious and wildly resonant, Beast Body Epic will astound, move, and give you strength."  Sandra Ridley, author of Vixen

“In Beast Body Epic, Amanda Earl refracts the experience of unwellness through an assortment of communications. She leans into visual poetry, the epic, allusion, disassociation, memoir, verse, prose, fable, allegory, and other modes in order to tell a complex story in a surprisingly succinct work. The variation is not only necessary, it’s seamless, and Amanda’s text flows with the protagonist through crisis into stasis and onward.“  Elee Kraljii Gardiner, An Introduction to Beast Body Epic.

This October I turn 60. This book is my way of celebrating my gratitude for being alive, and sharing that celebration with all of you darlings. I have many great things planned to celebrate. I hope you find joy, ferocity and just plain stubbornness in these pages.

We’re going to celebrate in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. I hope you can join me! Launches are taking place in Montreal (November 5, 2023, Accent Reading Series, 7:30pm); Zoom with Sandra Ridley and Christine McNair (November 12, 2023 2pm) and Toronto with Kirby, Jim Johnstone, Marcus McCann, Rasiqra Revulva and Dani Spinosa (The Tranzac Club Living Room, November 19, 2023, 3pm). More info on readings, reviews and interviews will also be available on AmandaEarl.com. and here soon!

Payment can be made on AngelHousePress.com under Publications via Paypal. If you would rather use an alternative form of payment, please e-mail amanda at angelhousepress dot com.