21st Century Coastal American Verses

Zack Dye's powerful debut collection travels from sea to sea, shining a light on the ways our country's systems of oppression twist our sense of identity, freedom, love, and loss into an American mythos we wear like a hairshirt. Dye's unique experience as a white-presenting Mexican American, as a person who has climbed up and down the socio-economic ladder, and as someone who has lived and traveled across the country, produces a unique voice, sometimes pulling the reader in, sometimes shoving us away angrily, leaving us shaken.

"Zack Dye's poems channel Walt Whitman, if the American everyman had been writing more often from a place of blazing rage. With verses that can encompass both the immensity of time and the wonder of a jelly donut, Dye's collection speaks to our struggle to stay human in a pixelated world."

-Eliza Stricland, Senior Editor at IEEE Spectrum

"Zack Dye's poetry expresses fleeting moments of joy and knowledge in the midst of confusion, misunderstanding, frustration, anger, and self-deception, engendered by the false dichotomies of race, language, and otherness in America."

-Jean Harkin, Author of Night in Alcatraz: and Other Uncanny Tales

"The song of a self with calloused feet and open heart, tumbling and vulnerable, raw and hopeful, inescapably honest."

- Brandon Keim, author of The Eye of the Sandpiper