Forthcoming 2026

 

Steeped in imagery and memory, Renée Nicholson’s moving third collection Feverdream conjures a West Virginia simultaneously past, present, and perpetual. This is the land that holds not just Nicholson’s dearest memories of her late brother, Nate, but also his very way of seeing and being in the world. Home, Nicholson reminds us, is more than a place or even its people—it is a quality of attention, an exchange of care, a mutual beholding. Feverdream feels like a gift, an invitation.

 

-- Jonathan C Chou, author of Resemblance/與

 

"Can you taste a place / in its harvest?" the speaker of "Shenandoah Valley Gold" asks. And yes—yes you can in Nicholson's poems, which harvest treasures such as home in West Virginia, the body, loss and grief, classic films, aging, worry, and wonder. These poems stretch elegantly between Nicholson's characteristic golden serenity, but also her crisp, silver clarity. This is a poet who reaches fingers toward the sun while also keeping toes touching the humble Appalachian earth. 

 

-- Natalie Homer, author of Under the Broom Tree

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In this, her third collection, poet Renée Nicholson transports us to core spaces (Home, Body, Loss, Seasons, Glow) while mapping new routes between observation and experience, practice and progress, interrogation and reconciliation... Renée’s poems belong to part of a broader emerging narrative medicine oeuvre. From an artistic perspective, they move in a way that parallels a dancer’s improvisation. Thematically, they humanize much of what would otherwise baffle us or elude us altogether. In Feverdream, every disease is a rare disease -- that is, as rare as the person who carries the weight of the diagnosis.

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-- Derek McCracken, International Narrative Practices Association and Lecturer, Columbia Narrative Medicine