Gabrielle Bates for Judas Goat
Monday 27th October
Topping & Company Booksellers of Edinburgh, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
6.30pm
7pm
We are so excited to be hosting the Scottish launch of Gabrielle Bates' debut poetry collection, Judas Goat. The conversation will be chaired by Jessica Widner.
Gabrielle Bates's electric debut collection Judas Goat plumbs the depths of intimate relationships. The book's eponymous animal is used to lead sheep to slaughter while its own life is spared, and its harrowing existence echoes through this spellbinding collection of forty poems, which wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the "forbidden felt language" of sexual and sacred love. These poems conjure encounters with figures from scriptures, domesticated animals eyeing the wild, and mothering as a shapeshifting, spectral force; they question what it means to love another person and how to exorcise childhood fears. All the while, the Deep South haunts, and no matter how far away the speaker moves, the South always draws her back home.
In confession, in illumination, Bates establishes herself as an unflinching witness to the risks that desire necessitates, as Judas Goat holds readers close and whispers its unforgettable lines.
Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (US: Tin House, 2023; UK: the87press, 2025), named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR and Electric Lit and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she is currently based in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and serves occasionally as visiting faculty for the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers' Workshops. Her poems have been published by the New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, the Best American Experimental Poetry anthology, and Literature Wales, among other publications. On Instagram: @gabrielle_bates_. Website: www.gabriellebat.es
Jessica Widner is a writer and academic. Her novel, Interiors, was released by the87press in 2022. Her short fiction has appeared in Ludd Gang, Extra Teeth, and Gutter. Her critical work centers around contemporary Korean women's writing, and creative writing pedagogy. She is a lecturer in English & Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde.