Pre-orders are open now! Books will ship December 1.
SENTENCE was chosen as the winner of the 2025 Nine Syllables Press chapbook contest by Eugenia Leigh, and combines the blistering scrutiny of documentary poetics with the tenacious love of a sister. Leary’s brother wrote journal entries during the 90 days he spent in county jail for addiction-related offenses, with the intention of creating a book together. Left with the gift and the challenge of this archive, Leary explores the merging of self and the surreal claustrophobia of incarceration, asking what it means to be virtuous amidst injustice in America and what it means to fiercely love those beyond our reach. In her judge’s citation, Leigh writes, “Susan L. Leary’s SENTENCE is a moving, clear-eyed collection balancing profound emotional restraint with marked tenderness as unwavering familial love radiates from the book’s precise seams… The taut, rigorous poems…capture both the held breath and the sharp, everlasting exhale of grief.”
Susan L. Leary is the author of five previous poetry collections, including More Flowers (Trio House Press, 2026), Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award, and the chapbook, A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as North American Review, Indiana Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily.
Pre-orders are open now! Books will ship December 1.
SENTENCE was chosen as the winner of the 2025 Nine Syllables Press chapbook contest by Eugenia Leigh, and combines the blistering scrutiny of documentary poetics with the tenacious love of a sister. Leary’s brother wrote journal entries during the 90 days he spent in county jail for addiction-related offenses, with the intention of creating a book together. Left with the gift and the challenge of this archive, Leary explores the merging of self and the surreal claustrophobia of incarceration, asking what it means to be virtuous amidst injustice in America and what it means to fiercely love those beyond our reach. In her judge’s citation, Leigh writes, “Susan L. Leary’s SENTENCE is a moving, clear-eyed collection balancing profound emotional restraint with marked tenderness as unwavering familial love radiates from the book’s precise seams… The taut, rigorous poems…capture both the held breath and the sharp, everlasting exhale of grief.”
Susan L. Leary is the author of five previous poetry collections, including More Flowers (Trio House Press, 2026), Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award, and the chapbook, A Buffet Table Fit for Queens (Small Harbor Publishing, 2023), winner of the Washburn Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as North American Review, Indiana Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily.
