Today we’re revealing the cover for Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins. It’s a poetry collection that uses the tale of Rapunzel as a the launch point for gathering a rich harvest of verse. The ink and watercolor art created by illustrator Renée Nault is a perfect pairing for the cover. Ault’s whimsical and textured style reflects the dynamic range of the poems within. The book is scheduled for release on July 29th but preorders will ship early and receive a $2 discount.

PREORDER Vellum Leaves & Lettered Skins for a $2 discount

About the Artist

Renée Nault is a Canadian artist known for her vivid and dreamlike illustrations in watercolor and ink. Her work has appeared in books, magazines, and graphic novels worldwide. She was the illustrator for the graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. She currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia. Visit her Etsy shop to purchase her art.

Book Description

Complex emotions and experiences are woven into the architecture of Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins, where the reader is both captured and freed by meditations on perseverance and survival. While fables and mythology tower over our literary landscape casting a long shadow, Anderson uses electrifying retellings in verse to illuminate new meaning in well-known tales.

Straddling the line between universal and deeply personal, this lush garden of poems has been seeded in a fairytale realm but grows beyond such boundaries into horror, fantasy, and confessional poetry. Anderson deftly prunes her concepts down to their powerful cores, revealing the truths at the root of our folklore.

In a world of princes and witches, of maidens and curses, brute force and heroic conquest can fail in the face of a gilded cage. Here, poems affirm the strength of subtlety and soft power as the untold stories of women shape the fortunes of entire kingdoms.