Against the Current

Assembled by Lithica Ann, this anthology brings together more than 150 haiku and senryu written in modern English. The poems come from the thirty writers who contributed most to issues 1 through 30 of the journal #FemkuMag, and the book is a tribute to them. Their work is by women and non-binary writers living across many parts of the world.

The poems cover a wide range of experience, from living with disability and surviving trauma to motherhood and encountering discrimination. Robin Palley wrote the foreword and Isabella Spiritoso contributed an essay. Across the collection, humor sits alongside grief, and the poems encourage readers to keep standing up for what they believe in, even when the world looks bleak.

The featured contributors include Debbie Strange, Christina Chin, Tia Haynes, Julie Schwerin, Helen Buckingham, Deborah P Kolodji, Cyndi Lloyd, Hifsa Ashraf, Réka Nyitrai, Valentina Ranaldi-Adams, Kath Abela Wilson, Eva Limbach, Corine Timmer, Susan Burch, Vandana Parashar, Lucia Cardillo, Lucy Whitehead, Roberta Beach Jacobson, Kelly Sauvage, Guliz Mutlu, Radostina Dragostinova, Robin Smith, Marilyn Ashbaugh, Irina Guliaeva, Elizabeth Crocket, Anna Maria Domburg-Sancristoforo, Tracy Davidson, Wanda Amos, Christina Sng, and Elizabeth Alford. The book also remembers Martha Magenta, Rachel Sutcliffe, and Jan Benson, and includes the winning poems from the Marlene Mountain Contest for 2018 through 2021. Those winners are Julie Bloss Kelsey, Susan Burch, Roberta Beary, Robin Smith, Tia Haynes, Vandana Parashar, Roberta Beach Jacobson, Susan Mallernee, Martha Magenta, Debbie Strange, Benedicta Adjei Baah, Laurie Greer, Tracy Davidson, Julie Schwerin, R.D. Bailey, Pris Campbell, Cynthia Anderson, Jennifer Hambrick, and Carmela Marino.