Sudden Seances

Poems

Published by Central Avenue Poetry
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About The Book

For women learning to turn their ghosts into power.

Sudden Seances conjures a world where memory hums like a spirit in the walls. It is a collection about loss, grief, and yearning—but at its core, it is about the haunting nature of the human experience. These poems call out beyond the veil, traversing the countless everyday rituals we use to summon the dead—whether through memories, objects, or the quiet ache of longing for something that’s long been lost.

Delving into all that’s said and unsaid between hello and goodbye, Sudden Seances explores the ways we continue to reach out long after a connection has closed. Awad’s poems linger in the spaces where the living and the remembered overlap, where ghosts—both literal and emotional—refuse to fade. Through ruminations on nostalgia, grief, and identity, this collection reflects on how the past never truly lets us go, and how we, too, are often unwilling to let what’s gone stay buried.

Excerpt

Going Bump in the Night: How to Scare Away the Ghosts

get an old standing radio and set it up in your living room / turn

the dial until you hear nothing but static and the interjection of

sporadic broken syllables / dance / climb up to the attic and walk

around at three in the morning / wear high heels / rearrange the

furniture / neglect the electric bill so the lights get turned off suddenly,

without warning / light a candle / carry it around when you get up to

go to the bathroom / shield the flame with your cupped hand / be the thing

around every dark corner / be the face in the mirror / be the echo of

footsteps / be the whistle in the distance / the whisper on the voice recorder /

the cold spot on the staircase / stand at the foot of your own bed / call out

“hello” / bellow “goodbye” / shout all the letters in between / turn on the

TV so it’s only transmitting snow / so it’s nothing but white noise / turn on

the kitchen faucet / open all the drawers and cabinets / learn morse code /

when you hear the disembodied knocks in the middle of the night / knock

back against the wall behind your bed /

About The Author

Michelle Awad is a poet, occasional novelist, and dedicated observer of the everyday, convinced that poetry can be found anywhere—provided one looks closely enough. Her work often explores themes of nostalgia, memory, and the unseen, tracing the ghosts and emotional detritus that shape the human experience. She is the author of the debut collection Soul Trash, Space Garbage and the chapbook Poems for the Apocalypse. Awad resides in New Orleans, where she can often be found enjoying a gin and tonic on an ironwork balcony or seeking insight from readers in Jackson Square.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Central Avenue Poetry (September 29, 2026)
  • Length: 160 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781771684774

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Raves and Reviews

"Michelle Awad is a poet unafraid of exposure, as seen in her willingness to be startlingly personal. Every poem in Sudden Seances feels animated by the belief that no memory is too embarrassing, no longing too obsessive, no grief too complicated to examine under bright light." — Alicia Cook, author of Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back

 

"Each poem in Michelle Awad’s Sudden Seances is an incantation. The true magic of Sudden Seances is its ability to prove that we are never, truly alone in our experiences." — Ari B. Cofer, author of paper girl and the knives that made her

 

"In this engrossing collection of poems, Michelle Awad weaves a detailed tapestry of nostalgia and yearning, alchemizing memories and then reclaiming them. To read this book is to enter a world where every frightening shadow is given time to dance in the sun; I could’ve stayed in it forever." — Cailtin Conlon, author of Burning the Ghost Light and The Surrender Theory

 

"Sexy, nostalgic, & haunted with hope, Sudden Seances is an ode to '90s girlhood & 90% humidity. It is biting in its self-awareness without ever tipping into self-indulgence. The container of the poem becomes a haunted house, then a cabinet of curiosities, then a shrine to the selves we used to be."  — Topaz Winters, author of So, Stranger and Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing

 

Sudden Seances feels like a coven welcoming you in.  Each poem is a spell, lines of magic that are both warmly familiar and excitingly new.” — L.E. Bowman, author of Shapeshifter and What I Learned from the Trees
 

“Awad puts a magnifying glass to the ache of our insecurities, the weight of grief, the vulnerability of yearning, and her depiction of girlhood is so spot on it almost hurts. This is a raw and accurate portrait of how love haunts you — how it stays, how it shapes you long after it’s gone.” — Raquel Franco, author of I'll Cry If I Want To 

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