Pre-order The Grace of Black Mothers by Martheaus Perkins

Note: This book will ship in late June, 2025

Martheaus Perkins' The Grace of Black Mothers brims with grace, nuance, and artistry, drawing a complex and bountiful Black world in the face of anti-Blackness and drawing upon the knowledge, wit, and wondrousness of Black mothers, ancestors, a boundless Black world.

Perkins' formal play and aesthetic daring, social critique and political engagement, and assured skill and fearlessness at going where these poems must go herald an important new talent!

-John Keene, author of Punks:; Selected Poems (The Song Cave, 2021), Counternarratives: Stories; Novellas (New Directions, 2015/Fitzcarraldo, 2016) and other works.

Martheaus Perkins was born to a single mother in Center, Texas. After a childhood in and out of homes in Houston, he graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University as a first-generation student.
He is the recipient of the Robert Creeley Memorial Award judged by John Keene, the President's Award by Voices, the GMU Rinehart Fiction Award, and the Robert Raymond Scholarship. He co-edits BRAWL Lit and teaches literature at George Mason University. Currently, he lives in the DMV with fellow writers of the "International House of Poets." The name "Martheaus" is a collection of each woman who raise him: "Mar-" for his grandmother's nickname, "-Thea-" for his mother's name, and "-us" for his big aunties.