{"id":6485,"date":"2026-02-13T15:07:46","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/?post_type=product&p=6485"},"modified":"2026-02-13T15:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T20:08:09","slug":"cryptid","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/product\/cryptid\/","title":{"rendered":"Cryptid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annah Browning\u2019s poetry collection\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Cryptid<\/span><\/span><\/em>\u00a0takes on weird phenomena and real desire. In these pages, a young woman from the rural South longs to be abducted by aliens; a female sasquatch spies on human families and pines for love; a Chinese spy balloon is heartbroken by being shot down. Through these personas and a host of strange happenings from American folklore,<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Cryptid<\/em><\/span><\/span>\u00a0probes the longing for something more buried at the heart of the lives of women and those\u00a0<\/span>deemed<\/span>\u00a0\u201cother\u201d by an unjust world. By turns irreverently funny, grotesquely bodily, and eerily\u00a0<\/span>heartbreaking,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Cryptid<\/span><\/span><\/em>\u00a0insists on the beauty of the unseen and the disbelieved.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

About the author<\/h2>\n

Annah Browning is the author of the poetry collection\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Witch Doctrine<\/span><\/span><\/em>\u00a0(University of Akron Press, 2020) and the chapbook\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The Marriage<\/span><\/span><\/em>\u00a0(Horse Less Press, 2013<\/span>), and<\/span>\u00a0is a cofounder of\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Grimoire Magazine<\/span><\/span>. Her work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Black Warrior Review<\/span><\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Denver Quarterly<\/span><\/span><\/em>, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Hailing from the foothills of South Carolina, Browning currently calls southern Illinois home, where she is a professor of English at Blackburn College.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Praise for Cryptid<\/em><\/h2>\n

Tender, weird, and heartbreaking, Browning’s collection pulses with striking imagery and lush phrasing in honor of the lonely, the unloved, and the abandoned. I want to be abducted by this book.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Alisa\u00a0Alering, author of\u00a0Smothermoss<\/i>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cryptid<\/span><\/i>\u00a0bleeds a cunningly ekphrastic mimesis of the\u00a0<\/span>National Enquirer<\/span><\/i>. Inviting you to indulge your favorite conspiracy theories, these uncanny love poems will force you to question your assumptions of safety, danger, and subjectivity. Collecting all sorts of tender grotesqueries, Browning dishes out unexpected mothers, voiced shadows hiding among canyons and mountains, and the gentlest abductions you can imagine. Readers eat the Lady Sasquatch\u2019s broken heart, and it tastes of \u201cfurred-over gelatin\u201d and \u201clacerated beef.\u201d Listen closely to the voices of familiar and unfamiliar monsters. Gravity shifts, and\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0calling out into the night. Can you hear them? These poems\u2014engorged, embodied,\u00a0enmouthed\u2014won\u2019t\u00a0go quietly.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Hannah V. Warren, author of\u00a0Slaughterhouse for Old Wives’ Tales<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Annah Browning\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Cryptid\u00a0<\/span><\/i>is a book for the longing-afflicted, which is to say, for all of us. \u201cI am always washing\/dishes, I am always here\/and not elsewhere,\u201d the would-be alien abductee tells us, and yet Browning knows how our minds refuse to stay put, traversing the forests, looking up, peering out or peering in. Ultimately, with tenderness and killer wit, this stellar collection reminds me why I adore poetry: because what is a poem itself if not a cryptid, a breathing, vegetal entity that inhabits the space between knowing and unknowability? Like \u201cthe window glass shaking after the door slam,\u201d you\u2019ll feel these poems in your spine for a long while after.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013Kerri Webster, author of\u00a0Lapis<\/i>\u00a0(Wesleyan University Press, 2022)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Annah Browning<\/h3>\n

Size: 6 x 9<\/p>\n

Page count: 71<\/p>\n

Pre-order now and get 30% off a copy of Cryptid<\/em> with the code PoetryLives26.<\/p>\n

Note: Discount code does not work on mobile devices.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6486,"template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[83887,80162],"product_tag":[98693,98691,98095,98694,98696,98579,98692,98695,98431],"class_list":{"0":"post-6485","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-akron-series-in-poetry","7":"product_cat-forthcoming-books","8":"product_tag-alien","9":"product_tag-cryptid","10":"product_tag-feminism","11":"product_tag-outsider","12":"product_tag-paranormal","13":"product_tag-queer","14":"product_tag-ufo","15":"product_tag-weird","16":"product_tag-women-authors","18":"first","19":"instock","20":"shipping-taxable","21":"product-type-simple"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/6485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=6485"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=6485"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/uapress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=6485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}