Todd Hearon’s haunting debut collection chronicles the twin paths of isolation and desire in the search for meaning and union with others. On his pilgrimage through the lost worlds of earth and the soul, the speaker encounters drought in both the literal and spiritual sense as he confronts desolate landscapes, from the brown remnants of ruined cities, to the depths of the human heart and man’s capacity for utter destruction. Yet even though he frequently encounters darkness, he never ceases to seek beauty. He is a man who wears many faces, from Adam, staring down a bleak future bereft of Paradise, to the doomed poet Shelley, drowned off the coast of Italy. He speaks as a man adrift in his own life, seeking an answer to his emptiness, an estranged traveler through memory and longing. Lyrical and intense, Strange Land is a quest for understanding and human connection. Todd Hearon’s poems have appeared in AGNI, Literary Imagination, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry London, Slate, and elsewhere. His book of poems, Strange Land, won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series Open Competition and is published by Southern Illinois University Press. He’s the recipient of a 2007 PEN New England “Discovery” Award and the 2007 Friends of Literature Prize from Poetry magazine. He lives in Exeter, New Hampshire, with his wife, the poet Maggie Dietz, and their twins and is an instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy. Anne Sanow is the author of the story collection Triple Time, winner of the 2009 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the 2010 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for fiction. Her book has been selected as a "Must-Read Book" from the 10th Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. Find out more at www.annesanow.com.