Join poets Marissa Forbes & Becca Downs as they celebrate the release of the 2nd edition of their debut poetry collections from Beyond the Veil Press.

Surviving Peter Pan (Marissa Forbes) is a poetry collection with a deep red ink stain of "reclamation" branded upon the classic Peter Pan tale by J.M Barrie. Told from the perspective of the inhabitants (particularly women) of Neverland overcoming the trials of loving a narcissist (Peter Pan). By examining the bittersweetness of motherhood, womanhood, childhood, and the relationships between families, fantasies, and healing, Surviving Peter Pan holds your inner child in open palms while lighting it on fire. It shines on your pain while sprinkling a little fairy dust on your soul. The collection is so unexpected, you'll never look at growing up the same again.

This poetic project was completed through Community Literature Initiative as a TA in the Fall 2023 and won the Winter 2023 Chapbook contest with Beyond The Veil Press.

Acid Rain Epithalamium (Becca Downs) is a rich, layered text that showcases a range of formal and thematic work. Within the poems are reversals, questionings, tentativeness as the speaker grieves losses—but there’s a strength of voice underneath those hesitancies that is explosive, espouses commitment to an unmapped future, and is ready to be set free. - Khadijah Queen, author of Anodyne

With this exquisite debut collection from Becca Downs, we join the poet as she navigates divorce, climate change, and the many parallels in these transformations. Throughout the collection, Downs’ voice emerges with strength, tenderness, rich with emotional gravitas. Her deft, delicate hand and elegant poems are powerful, wrestling with compelling narratives around inherited beliefs and choices while creating a new path forward to a life and a world that is worthy of poignant and exacting poetry.