Feral, North Carolina, 1965
"Feral, North Carolina, 1965 is a powerful gem. Told with wit and verve, the novel unfolds in vignettes... Feral captures a time and place with impeccable world building, astute observations, and subtle humor, yet does not hide from the bigotry and malice that drives the final chapters.."
—Claire Hamner Matturro for Southern Literary Review
"Aside from a perfect title, June Sylvester Saraceno’s slender forest fire of a book is full of delights. What a welcome fictional triumph from one of my favorite poets."
—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels
The Girl From Yesterday
June Sylvester Saraceno’s The Girl from Yesterday excavates bloodlines, legacy, birthright, and dissolution with bravery and honesty. Saraceno's poems about her son, father, mother, and ultimately “the blue plate of marriage smashed,” transcend the ordinary and illuminate the human experience of love, loss, and redemption. These poems ultimately teach us about relationships, memory, liberation—and the resilient grace of a remarkable poet.
—Lee Herrick
It's easy to see each poem in this collections as a gorgeously crafted bead, some elegiac, some celebratory, strung together to create a breathtaking whole, something to hold close to the heart.
—Gayle Brandeis
Of Dirt and Tar
"There's a rumor making the rounds that poetry, alas, is dead--I know of no better way to refute that idiocy than to immerse yourself in these lyric stanzas..."
-Patricia Smith
"June Saraceno's Of Dirt and Tar explores and illuminates interior and exterior worlds, as well as the temporal landscape of generations, as Alice might walk from one world into another; Saraceno guides us on the journey..."
-Brian Turner
"These poems are both artifact and art in their quiet, soulful courageousness."
-Laura McCullough
Altars of Ordinary Light
"Altars of Ordinary Light, in part, revives powerful memories of a coastal childhood with imagery as sharp as the scent of low tide in a salt marsh. June Sylvester Saraceno focuses a subject, adjusts the light and angle until it reveals what we have been too busy to see-the eloquence and sanctity of the everyday."
-Peter Makuck,
"The title is apropos for a book that seeks to shed light on ordinary living-childhood, family, marriage, womanhood. Saraceno's verse is accessible, yet filled with vivid imagery."
-Ellen Hopkins,
These are honest, generous poems.
-Lola Haskins,
Mean Girl Trips
Mean Girl Trips is a chapbook of prose poems published by Pudding House Publications.