Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood

Meditations on time, motherhood, and the ordinary beauty of everyday life

Like a newborn’s patterns of sleeping and waking, the revelations of motherhood don’t follow a reasonable schedule, and there’s no clocking out. Organized around the hours of the day, Foxes for Everybody gives voice to the marvels, fears, absurdities, and astonishments of parenthood. These essays offer twenty-four glimpses into how we experience time, our families, our planet, and all of those small moments that aren’t small at all. In memories and reflections that weave through tornadoes and jellyfish, cemeteries and carousels, mortality, mental health, and the exquisite gift of a perfect sentence, acclaimed writer Catherine Pierce reminds us that fear and joy can and do live side by side, and urges us to stay awake--even when, especially when, we’re at the brink of exhaustion--to the possibility of wonder.

CATHERINE PIERCE is the author of five poetry collections, including the upcoming Dear Beast and the most recent Danger Days. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and has won two Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, she served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021 to 2025.