Painted Winds, by Ariya Bandy

Poetry, chapbook, 28 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

What happens when you waltz so far from yourself that your feet no longer fit in your footsteps? Ariya Bandy’s debut chapbook, Painted Winds, traverses the journey from youth to young adulthood and counts splinters caught in the transition between innocence and independence.

These fifteen poems are the rumble of anticipation that sweeps you through the sky when you have eyes on the future and a heart in the past. They explore what it means to live life and let it pass you. What happens when growth and grief weave themselves into a crown to guide you to what parts of yourself will shed or remain.

“Filled with heart and soaring language, iconic emblems of youth come together in Ariya Bandy's poems to envision girlhood, its tragedies, and the bittersweetness of its passing.”

—Stella Lei, author of Inheritances of Hunger

Ariya Bandy is a writer of poetry and fiction who loves to surround herself with many types of literature. She is thrilled to have the opportunity to share her debut chapbook with the world. Her work appears in Iceblink Literary Magazine, Querencia Autumn 2023 (Querencia Press), and elsewhere. Find more of her work on ariyabandy.com.