What Life Is Like Here on Earth - Softcover

Riegel, Katherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1962405737 ISBN 13: 9781962405737

Publisher: Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2026

Synopsis

What Life Is Like Here on Earth dashes between images of hope and joy like a pedestrian caught in a downpour without an umbrella; there's no denying the cold, pelting rain of personal and environmental loss, but even so, there are animals, kind strangers, and love. These poems let readers in on a Midwestern childhood with horses, a woman's life in two generations, the interior monologue of a middle-aged person with chronic illness. They're heartbroken, angry, self-deprecating. Magic peeks into the ordinary world from the distant past and the inevitable future. What happened and what's imagined exist side by side. What do you long for? What makes you suffer? What gives you solace? You know what it's like, this life here on earth.

About this title

About the Authors

Katherine Riegel's most recent book is a lyric memoir about her sister and grief, Our Bodies Are Mostly Water (Cornerstone Press, 2025). Her previous collections of poetry are Love Songs from the End of the World (Main Street Rag, 2019), Letters to Colin Firth (Winner of the Sundress Publications Chapbook Competition, 2015), What the Mouth Was Made For (FutureCycle, 2013), and Castaway (FutureCycle, 2010). Her poems have appeared in Poets Reading the News, Rattle, SWWIM, Thimble, and elsewhere. Co-founder and managing editor of Sweet (sweetlit.org), she runs online writing classes in poetry and flash creative nonfiction. Find her at katherineriegel.com and in southern Scotland, where she moved in summer 2025 with her British husband, two Golden Retrievers, and two cats.

Founding editor, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions

Edition details

• Publisher: Sheila-Na-Gig Editions
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1962405737
• ISBN 13: 9781962405737
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 86
• Editor: Haugen Hayley