Notes from the Journey Westward
AUTHOR
Joe Wilkins
A book that interrogates the idea of America--especially our westering, both historical and contemporary.
Reviews
"Wilkins' poems are savage and beautiful, full of hard-won lives and a godawful tenderness. In this book Manifest Destiny is more than political rhetoricit's a call to find the limits of survival. It has dust-stunned men, hardscrabble women, and a patient devil, sharpening his teeth."
– Traci Brimhall
"For Wilkins, the American West is no theme park or romantic diorama. He offers an earnest glimpse into past and present landscapes that are real and imagined, mourned and celebrated and witnessedfor these are human landscapes."
– Michael McGriff
Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon. He is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Book Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award and has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, and German. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and four collections of poetry, including Thieve, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award. His second novel, The Entire Sky, is slated for publication in July 2024 with Little, Brown. Wilkins directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.