books

Diode Editions

May 2024

ISBN 978-1-939728-63-0

This is your task: infiltrate every pediatrician’s office & sneak copies of all children. into stacks of old magazines, to be uncovered like a holy relic of light by all the weird kids, by the misunderstood kids, the hurt kids, by children with too much inside them, by those afraid to say what must be said, by children who are also adults & trapped in a culture of violence o& trauma, children who’ve hidden inside themselves for lifetimes, which is to say, by all children, as we are all children. In this swirling book of beautiful & terrifying & hilarious & terrifying writing, Shabnam Piryaei uses the light-hearted rhetoric of children’s magazines to reach to the reader, to hold a light up in the darkness each reader hold inside. This is a book unlike any other. It is here to help you.

- Mathias Svalina 

I remember as a kid reading Highlights and loving it–the stories, activities, comics, what’s wrong with this picture? puzzles–but also feeling ill at ease, like it, with all the materials of my youth, was hiding something. Now, reading Shabnam Piryaei’s all children. (<– with its definitive, sonorous period), I can see that was it was hiding was: consciousness. Piryaei’s work is like a children’s magazine rewritten in the language of poetry, revealing childhood–what it is made of, what it is re/making–as far more precarious, unpredictable and spellbinding.

- Brandon Shimoda 

So alive–this radical book of visions and portals and light, each phrase a vial of energy, capacious and exquisitely honed, like “kindred I love / you. who is your light / for.” For me all children. is a book of spirits, a mystic’s gorgeous trace, an experimental children’s magazine for adults (“Family / I am speaking to the child / in you.”) Here Shabnam Piryaei so fiercely orients us toward life and one another that my eye, in the midst of catastrophe, is by hers touched: “Nape of morning. / Miracle / worlding miracle.”

- Aracelis Girmay 

Shabnam Piryaei’s all children. takes the form of a children’s magazine, a fascinating formal conceit carried out expertly. A reader encounters all the cartoons and games and recipes and cryptograms and riddles one might expect in such an affair. But Piryaei utterly stranges it, ironizes the form and the book’s title itself, demonstrating how not all children are equally able to enjoy the reverie of childhood, of puzzles in a kid’s book. Piryaei writes: “Say something ordinary. Repeat it until it no longer sounds ordinary.” The effect is haunting, incisive, wildly uncanny. This is a book I won’t soon forget, and a writer I’ll be watching closely.

- Kaveh Akbar 

Shabnam Piryaei’s stunning collection all children., which imitates the form of a children’s magazine, is dotted with both hand-drawn and computer-generated illustrations–form revealing imagery rife with motifs of animals, children’s games, and even violence. “To love is to create / all from a tale of nothing,” and yet the poet muses that the life of a child (both literal and figurative) is often burdened with the need to “navigate the tenacity of the dark.” Even so, Piryaei’s pen deftly reveals and hides–both giving and taking–the ways in which the child in all of us is or is not perceived and given love. There are clever uses of erasure throughout the work that ultimately change the landscape of the poem (its transformation in itself a form of revelation). The poet speaks of infinite tragedies, large and small: current events such as the COVID pandemic, during which the quarantine prevented much of domestic child abuse from being detected, are intertwined with tiny tragedies disguised as fairytale prose. But “to summon the sheer scope of life” evokes much more than such tragedy. all children. speaks, indeed, to all children–our current selves never truly separate from our childhood identities. Piryaei’s language is masterful–at once exacting and beautiful–infinitely pleasurable to puzzle out. Bravo.

- Ina Cariño 

The Operating System

June 2017

ISBN 978-1946031075

Shabnam Piryaei cracks open experience to reveal elliptical and exquisite music. Her language is acrobatic, “earskin taut” and bristles with a “disassembling/gaze,” which allows her to reassemble memory into poems that astonish and delight. Adventurous, sonic-rich, and lush, Nothing is Wasted is a book that quickens and enlarges our contemporary lives and vocabularies.

- Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning

If you are as crazy about anaphoras as I am, then the first poem in Nothing Is Wasted will engage and bid you proceed. Shabnam Piryaei’s work rings smart, “Every inheritance is a compass.”; surreal, “a benevolent crow/pecked daylight’s bullet/into the room” …; and at the same time, pinned fast with moments that are utterly tactile, “somehow unbroken/in your sleeping hand, a speckled egg.” A charming voice where “Nothing Is Wasted”.

- Kimiko Hahn, author of Brain Fever

In Shabnam Piryaei’s Nothing is Wasted, the negative space of a photograph becomes the focal reality of her verse. Steeped in an aesthetic of nuance, each of these poems considers the expanses and shadows that surround the subject, never taking for granted the things that can be illuminated, even in the darkest corners. At once ethereal and rooted, these poems take on an exploration of our contemporary lives across landscapes both internal and external. These are poems that make us (re)consider our interior selves.

- Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahrir Suite

Museum Books

April 2014

ISBN 978-0-615-96654-0

…it’s quite a good book. The story is not told in a straightforward fashion but is, rather, fragmented. It slips in and out of present time, in and out of the perspectives of various characters who often seemed unrelated to each other and to the main story. But it’s compelling nonetheless: with well-drawn characters, believable situations, and a way of looking at the immigrant experience that I’ve not seen before. The main character Ylenia must face the painful alteration of her country after “the transition”, then the loss of that country, along with the loss of her best friend There and the woman who becomes her best friend Here. I was impressed with the author’s command of place, individual settings, and characterizations. I’d definitely recommend this book, especially for Book-Talk groups.

- Elizabeth George, NY Times bestselling author

Plain View Press

October 2010

ISBN 978-1-935514-75-6

A terrifyingly beautiful collection on the manifestations of fragility and vulnerability in the human body and soul, this haunting poetry anthology will leave you at the edge of your seat well after its final pages.

- City Book Review

Contrary to its title, Shabnam Piryaei’s first poetry collection comes on heavy.  Don’t be fooled by the reappearing motifs of eggshells, eyelids, and feathers; there is nothing brittle about the emotions in these poems… Piryaei offers us a complex collection that, as poet Muriel Rukeyser put it, reaches us intellectually while showing that “the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.”

-  Hyphen Magazine

With economy of language, the book strikes a power-punch of sharp, clear, contrasting, heart stopping, yet delicately precise, awe-inspiring imagery… This is a book outside the box of books… This collection of works is excellent. It sets itself apart from other good books, by other authors, by the quality of the writing combined with the book’s creative DNA. Each poem made me ravenous for more.

-  Persian Book Review

Paper Confessions by Shabnam Piryaei is a poem of stunning imagery and an equally staggering opening verse.

-  Author Alliance

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