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“Chang thrives at embodying and vocalizing universal feelings of anxiety, joy, grief, fear, and wonder. Further, it’s as if readers of her poetry are invited to visit a theater designed to accommodate a form or tradition with which she is obsessed . . . [With My Back to the World] is fully engaged with Agnes Martin’s paintings, drawings, and writings . . . Chang expertly probes the limitations of art’s ability to offer comfort or satisfaction.”

Victoria Chang’s most recent book of poems is, With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024). Her prior book of poetry is The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her nonfiction book, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief was published in 2021. OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), her book of poems received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. It was also a finalist for the Griffin International Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as longlisted for the National Book Award. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.

With My Back to the World is available from White Whale Bookstore.