Bryn Mawr Alum

2026 shortlist for a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry and a Golden Crown Literary Award

Samantha Pious's translations from the Portuguese of Judith Teixeira's poetry in Cactus Flowers resound with sensual energy and burning tenderness. Reading these poems, one is struck not only with the passion of Teixeira's queer love poems but by the way in which turbulent politics and social tensions are subtly traceable within the lines. Translations such as this renew literature across multiple languages; Pious is asking us not only to reconsider Teixeira's place within the canon but to reconsider what makes the canon itself: whose stories are valid, which loves are counted, whose language is considered inventive or new. Pious translates Teixeira's synesthetic rapture for English language readers who might be out of practice with such unconstrained earnestness, reminding us that pleasure does have the possibility of obliterating the pain it passes through. What excites me perhaps most about this collection, however, is its ability to transgress any notion of a quiet reading experience. The lone reader is thrown into the bodily world, reminding us that words first and foremost are of the body and its unique experiences.

-Allison Grimaldi Donahue

Judith Teixeira's poetry has almost always, over the decades, discomfited specialists, whether because she was a woman writer whose style (Symbolist-Decadent, saudosista, and modernist) was used by the masculine canon of her day, or because her own amorous discourse manifests, at times, a lesbian desire characteristic of the poetic of the boudoir. Her verses disquiet, fascinate, and give rise to heated discussions, as often in her defense as in the condemnation of her work. Above all, she translated the clashes of the Roaring Twenties and fought for the right to liberty and artistic expression.

This English edition-with a selection and preface by Samantha Pious, wherein I would underline the sensitivity and care of her fine translations, as well as her personal commitment-allows Anglophone readers to connect with the first Portuguese woman writer to sing of lesbian love, transforming women's bodies into objects of worship and of carnal consummation.

We celebrate this edition, then, with the words Judith Teixeira wrote in 1922 in her poem "Free," which return to life, reinvented, in 2025: "today, my desire intensifies / for what other hours might bring."

-Fabio Mario da Silva

In Cooking Data Cal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data are never clean; rather, they are always "cooked" during their production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce them. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information-such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers-acquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American--"in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself" (NPR). - CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

"The narrative unfolds like a high-stakes crime novel."--Kirkus Reviews

In 1898, a group of schoolboys in Bridgeport, Connecticut discovered gruesome packages under a bridge holding the dismembered remains of a young woman.

Finding that the dead woman had just undergone an abortion, prosecutors raced to establish her identity and fix blame for her death. Suspicion fell on Nancy Guilford, half of a married pair of "doctors" well known to police throughout New England.

A fascinated public followed the suspect's flight from justice, as many rooted for the fugitive. The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill takes a close look not only at the Guilfords, but also at the cultural shifts and social compacts that allowed their practice to flourish while abortion was both illegal and unregulated.

Focusing on the women at the heart of the story--both victim and perpetrator--Biederman reexamines this slice of history through a feminist lens and reminds us of the very real lives at stake when a woman's body and choices are controlled by others.