What strange gravity draws two people together? What pulls them apart?

In THE SMALL WAY, a woman re-evaluates herself and her marriage as she comes to terms with a spouse's transition. Intimate and powerful, the poems celebrate the courage of a partner coming out as a trans woman and records the confusion in facing a partner's changing gender identity. Speaking to the tenderness that exists between two people, the book explores shifting bodies and changing emotional landscapes, and examines what it really means to love someone. The poems reside in the stillness of two bodies and in the intersection between time and grief. THE SMALL WAY is a passionate record of love and loss, and a naked exploration of vulnerability. The book is an elegy to love and memory, a chronicle of holding on and letting go.

Onjana Yawnghwe was born in Thailand but is a part of the Shan people from Burma (Myanmar). She grew up in Vancouver and received a MA in English from UBC. Her poems have been featured in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011, 4 Poets, CV2, Room, and The New Quarterly. She was also awarded the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Literary Artist in 2012. She was a co-founder of Fish Magic, a micro press specializing in limited-run, hand-made chapbooks and was co-editor of Xerography, a little literary journal. Onjana currently works as a nurse in mental health and has completed a book-length biography-in-poems about Buster Keaton. More of her projects can be found at www.onjana.com.

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