God Stars
essays by Cherie Nelson Senie
Orison Books
paper / $20.00
Print ISBN: 978-1-949039-74-0
E-book ISBN: 978-1-949039-75-7Distributed to the trade by Itasca Books
952-223-8373 / orders@itascabooks.com
Publication Date: October 6, 2026
ABOUT THE BOOK
Cherie Nelson Senie's debut essay collection investigates the difficult process of redefining one's faith. The death of a close friend, the complexities of language and of romantic relationships, and the expectations directed toward women within a patriarchal religious structure begin to challenge Nelson Senie's faith. All the places she once found stability—the Bible, an old maroon dictionary, the night sky—begin to crumble. In part an investigation into how this evolution occurred, God Stars is equally concerned with living in the nascent uncertainty. This constellation of formally varied essays creates a deeply personal map for a new kind of faith—one that is not scared to risk in order to gain something more.
PRAISE
"The passage of time is not a linear experience, nor is the making of a self. This is the centripetal truth around which the fragmented essays in Cherie Nelson Senie's God Stars revolve. From childhood to adulthood and back again, Nelson Senie takes the reader on a cosmic trip through a life of questioning. Time bends in on itself as she wrestles with powerful questions of faith, doubt, place, and perspective. For fans of Molly Wizenberg and Glennon Doyle, this collection of fragments will no doubt help to heal the whole."
—Jeanna Kadlec, author of Heretic: A Memoir
"As a child, Cherie Nelson Senie lay beneath the glow-in-the-dark stars in her bedroom and felt the first rush of terror: the dread of living forever—untethered, in space. Years later, far from Kansas and her Evangelical Christian upbringing, she learns that even Polaris drifts, every 'fixed' point is temporary, and that her long-held faith is receding. God Stars—part atlas, part elegy—moves through radiant lyric essays punctuated by fragments and redactions, where language flickers, disappears, and returns. Along the way, Nelson Senie tries to hold onto what matters most: a mother whose certainty comforts and unsettles; a sibling who remakes the meaning of 'us'; a friend whose death breaks open the question of heaven; and a lover whose closeness brings both solace and vertigo. A luminous debut."
—Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, author of Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between
"It’s no exaggeration to say readers will feel transported by Cherie Nelson Senie's God Stars. These essays, intimate and formally daring, shift perspective with a riveting confidence. Taken together, they chart a complicated terrain where belief collides with love, longing, and desire, filtered through the ceaseless inquiry an artist brings to every corner of life."
—Erica Trabold, author of Five Plots"There’s a lovely moment in God Stars when the author writes of dancing rapturously around a linoleum kitchen floor listening to a gospel album—one moment among many in this book—which viscerally makes the spiritual human. Whatever your religious belief (or lack, or curiosity, thereof), embodying the ineffable within this physical world is (forgive me) a hell of a challenge. God Stars exceeds that challenge."—Sue William Silverman, author of Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cherie Nelson Senie is a writer, editor, and educator from Kansas. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Literature from Colorado State University and is a former editor of Ruminate Magazine. Her critical and creative work has been published in Prairie Schooner, The Florida Review, Hobart, EcoTheo Review, Speculative Nonfiction, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Colorado with her partner.