Girlhood x A Haunting - Softcover

Bergamino, Jessica Rae

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1949065340 ISBN 13: 9781949065343

Publisher: Driftwood Press, 2025

Synopsis

In Jessica Rae Bergamino's full-length poetry book Girlhood x A Haunting, the reader carries Nancy Drew's magnifying glass through a lyrically experimental and visually evocative collection that uncovers the traumas lurking in girlhood.

Bergamino is a master of the persona poem, speaking through the voice of Nancy Drew and letting the mask slip to expose the real speaker who is experiencing and surviving childhood trauma, and the woman who is trying to understand.

In this visually rich collection, artistic representations by cover artist Io Wuerich of personal photographs, and concrete and experimental poetic forms, are utilized to encourage the reader to engage in a deeper investigation of the clues laid down by the speaker.

This book is also about the complex task of interrogating memory. It asks how to make sense of childhood memories and the cultural icons underpinning larger understandings of the past and gender by speaking directly to, through, and about Nancy Drew and other characters in her universe.

This book, winner of Driftwood Press's Editors' Pick Prize, is for fans of Nancy Drew, for those who have experienced trauma, and for lovers of experimental poetry. Girlhood x A Haunting is a reclamation of the self, and of the stories that become linked to identity.

About this title

About the Authors

Jessica Rae Bergamino is the author of UNMANNED (Noemi Press, 2018) as well as chapbooks from dancing girl press and Sundress Publications. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press, 2022), and of two chapbooks, Tumbling After (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022) and Hooked Through (2017). She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and North American Review, among others. In 2023, she became the Managing Poetry Editor of Driftwood Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: Driftwood Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1949065340
• ISBN 13: 9781949065343
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 124
• Editor: Wagner Sara Moore