Fictive Kin, by Shan Cawley

Poetry, chapbook, 44 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Life, death, and the love that stretches us from one end to the other - Shan Cawley’s Fictive Kin is an exploration of the relationship between father and daughter, and more specifically, a relationship that is strained by alcoholism. Through confessional command and brute lyricism, Cawley delves deeply into the nature of her father’s life as an alcoholic, and how his death from alcohol abuse contorts every mirror, dream, and vision in her path.

Spanning from her father’s birth in 1960 and racing on the crash course of his life until 2020, Cawley employs pain and transforms it into literary power. A student of Sylvia Plath, Sara Sutterlin, and Shy Watson, Cawley seeks to understand the fatherly unknown. Bound to nowhere and no one, Fictive Kin accepts the fate of the damned and the implications of death on those who are still living.

Shan Cawley is a PhD student at West Virginia University studying higher education. Before her entrance into academia, Cawley published two chapbooks with Maudlin House Press entitled kingdom now (2018) and depression is a thunderstorm and i am a scared dog (2017). When Cawley isn’t crying over comprehensive exams and statistics, she’s playing guitar terribly and thinking about pop culture. You can keep up with Shan on Instagram @dr.idiot_.