NAKED IN PUBLIC: Poems and Prayers from the Backlog

The internet keeps us alive in the age of abuse. The poems of NAKED IN PUBLIC dare to undress the reality and remorse of reclaiming your body after being brutally exposed online. While slowly dismembering the jowls of abuse, award-winning writer Leah Juliett reveals that they have chosen to celebrate their skin whilst mourning the ways in which it has been weaponized and sexualized without their consent. As the author declares, "this fever isn't forever" and "I am the holiday my body has always loved to live in".

NAKED IN PUBLIC is the bones the author leaves behind, through which themes of unabashed faith, gender, sexuality, sex and abuse, mental health, body image, violence, visibility, safety, technology, addiction, and grief are undressed and untangled in the hot light of day.

Reviews:

"like a vice that slowly locks you in and holds you still" -BRETT A. MADDUX, Author of Algorithm Hymns

"Leah Juliett writes: "When the boy who posted my naked pictures online / locked me in cyber shame, / he forgot to lock my voice. / My real bare art." & I thank every god for the voice that is stark and still alive. In their debut collection, Naked in Public, Leah Juliett reminds readers to love the parts of ourselves put to shame, with tenderness and rage." -MILA CUDA, Youth Poet Laureate of the West Coast (2018)

"Leah Juliett speaks from "the beyond" of shame as someone who has suffered death at its hands, societally and almost literally, again and again. They bring a cathartic honesty to each page, offering reclamation as a messy and uncertain process. These poems are so painful they make me cry; in the crying there is the awesome reminder of human feeling - Juliett reminds me we are both still here, that crying is the first sound of life." -SOPHIE HUNTER, Poet and Pop Musician