Storied, by Aubrey Anne Little Brady

Poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Storied looks at what it means to be impacted by stories—to be “storied.” From Adam to Rumpelstiltskin, this collection finds us plunked directly into the hearts of these well-known protagonists and villains. These poems look intimately at the stories we know, the stories we think we know, the stories we have been told about ourselves, the stories we tell ourselves, and the stories we believe to be true. Once you start pulling at the string that connects us through these stories, we find that, like Kai in “The Snow Queen,” we can’t help “but tug at the loose string that dangles in front of your fingers, / keep pulling and pulling until the very heart of life spills from the center.”

In the title poem, Aubrey Anne Little Brady explains that she wants “to tell you a story about the bones that hold it all together, / but I get lost in the maze of halls, trip / over the carpet that ends / in a gash of wood and concrete.” This collection offers a tour where it wanders the mismatched corridors of this building of stories.

Aubrey Anne Little Brady is a poet and musician. She received her MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry at Lindenwood University. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, Ekstasis, Moria, Big Sky Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Montana with her husband, Matthew, and their two children. You can find her online at aubreybrady.com