Prelude: Poems

Prelude delineates the gay female experience through a poetic reconstruction of the girlhood of Catherine of Siena, a Catholic saint who lived in 1300s Italy and disobeyed her parents by refusing marriage to devote her life to God. Through a historical lens, Brynne Rebele-Henry examines the erasure of gay women’s lives and offers a perspective of medieval queer girlhood while considering themes such as violence, desire, and the lesbian body.

Brynne Rebele-Henry’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in such journals as The American Poetry Review, Epiphany, Denver Quarterly, Volt, and Blackbird. Her writing has won numerous awards, including the 2015 Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America and a 2017 Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner.
Her poetry book, Autobiography of a Wound (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) won the AWP Donald Hall Poetry Prize, was one of Library Journal’s Top Fall Poetry Picks for 2018, and was a finalist for the 2019 Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award. Her bilingual (English and Slovenian) chapbook, Vizije Se Začnejo Pri Sestih (Visions Begin at Six), was published by Beletrina in 2018. She is a 2021-2022 Fulbright Scholar in Slovenia. Her first novel, Orpheus Girl, was published by Soho Teen in 2019.
Orpheus Girl received the 2021 Young Adult Virginia Author Award from the Richmond Public Library, and has been reviewed in NPR, Ms. Magazine, and Bitch Media among other places, and listed as one of the most anticipated YA novels by Barnes & Noble and Chicago Review of Books.