• Age: 16 to 18
• Grade: 11 to 12

"Šari Dale's Para-Social Butterfly tells us early on that 'Glamour is a machine.' These mechanics of the present whirl through the forms of the inventive and refreshing poems in this collection: they're complicated, incredible. Šari Dale catalogs the repertoire of the contemporary moment, its never-ending scroll of talking filters, niche celebrities, and crypto-graphics. From talking heads in the feed to embodying the online iPhone persona that without which we simply would disappear forever, Para-Social Butterfly holds up a mirror to our faces, then dares us to have a good time. I loved reading this book. Loved it!"
- BEN FAMA, author of Death Wish (Newest York Arts Press) and Fantasy (Ugly Duckling)

“Para-Social Butterfly is a brilliant dive into the mind’s eye of what it means to exist between Cheugy cringe, pop-up ads, luxury, technophiles, and a search for influence. Šari Dale writes poems in a hyper-real voice with a delicate and sensitive beauty that brings us swiftly back into our bodies. We are on our phones buying things we can’t afford while we strip to tan. We are longing for the pastoral vintage look we see in photos online. This book is investigating the result of nihilism and hope when mixed. Šari Dale is so much smarter than most of us – she just gets it.”
- LAURA MARIE MARCIANO, author of Mall Brat (Civil Coping Mechanisms)

Disillusioned with her life as a waitress, an aspiring influencer implants a micro-projector into her brain to live in a world of her own creation called the Ultra-Glam. The Ultra-Glam is a virtual reality of fame, glamour, hyperpop, mass-media images, movie trailers, celebrity selfies, and perfume advertisements. The further she goes into this world, the more the borders of reality become blurred. Is her reality the one in which her physical body exists? Or is it the one which she creates, beyond the realms of the physical? And is this world created on her own terms? Para-Social Butterfly is a fun, beautiful, dark, and twisted look into the question of existence in the digital age.

Šari Dale's profile page

Šari Dale writes from Prince George, BC on unceded ancestral lands of the Lheidli T'enneh. She holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, where she was the recipient of The Creative Writing Prize. Her poetry has been published in Arc, Grain, and The Malahat Review among others and anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2021 and Poetry Daily.