Cassandra J. Bruner
A Room of One's Own 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, Wisconsin 53704
press release: A Room of One's Own welcomes Cassandra J. Bruner, author of The Wishbone Dress!
“To wish with a wishbone means to break the wishbone. The poems in this chapbook enact another kind of breaking—the speaker veers from binary thinking and living. ‘Every girl must know her annunciation,’ writes the poet... The imagery—dazzling, uncanny—brings us close to the emotional and intellectual turmoil orbiting transition. ‘I paint the mirror / white, a frost no bulb could sprout from’ and ‘a wish for recognition, for his budding breasts / to hide themselves away like fawns.’ The poems not only record the struggle to become, but also make visible the chaotic wonder of living... The craft choices are exact and exacting. Language, in this poet’s hands, never breaks; it remembers, it yearns.”
—Eduardo C. Corral, judge of the 2019 frost place chapbook competition
Cassandra J. Bruner, the 2019-2020 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow, earned her MFA from Eastern Washington University. A transfeminine poet and essayist, their writing has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Muzzle, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2019 Frost Place competition, her chapbook, The Wishbone Dress, is forthcoming from Bull City Press. Currently, she lives in Madison, teaching at University of Wisconsin.