Sanctuary, Vermont
poems by Laura Budofsky Wisniewski
 
Winner of The 2020 Orison Poetry Prize, selected by Katie Ford
Winner of The 2022 New England Poetry Club Sheila Margaret Motton Prize
Bronze winner for poetry in The 2022 Foreword INDIES Awards
 
Orison Books
paper  /  64pp.  /  $16.00
ISBN: 978-1-949039-33-7
Distributed to the trade by Itasca Books
952-223-8373  /  orders@itascabooks.com
Publication Date: April 5, 2022
 
ABOUT THE BOOK
 
Here, past, present, and future residents of Sanctuary, a richly imagined Vermont town, are given voice. Laura Budofsky Wisniewski joins the lineage of Edgar Lee Masters, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Louise Glück in inhabiting and valorizing the extraordinary inner lives of everyday people. Sanctuary's townspeople endure hardships and loneliness, suffer injustice and racism, but still find moments of solace, beauty, and communion.
 
PRAISE
 
"Wisniewski’s debut builds to a novelistic sense of place and plenitude with shades of Thornton Wilder or Edgar Lee Masters."
—The New York Times Book Review
 
"[T]his is not a bucolic set of odes to the Green Mountain State; instead, it’s an imaginative look at its dark sides, its complexities, its evils, then as now."
—The Boston Globe
 
"When we learned that Laura had published this debut collection at age 70, we were intrigued, but we weren’t prepared to fall in love. Fall we did. [...] Though the setting may seem bucolic, many of these