Interiors is a chapbook by Rachel Stempel, winner of the 2021 Wallace Award from Foundlings Press, with original cover art by Julie Molloy.

“Yes, a fragment is a good thing to be.” Dear Abbey is an open letter to a failed Tinder relationship in which the author struggles, perhaps without resolution, to hold themselves accountable. The book posits a narrative contract through lyric, something of mind and body that challenges the author’s sense of an individualized self.

Exploring how this contract gives meaning to existence through discussion of poetry, film, and music, Dear Abbey attempts to connect the author to their lost loves through the beatitude of queer community. Fragmented, inconclusive, and at times, outright contradictory, Dear Abbey is, at its core, an experiment in vulnerability, not so much resisting genre categorization but dismissing it in favor of other modes of belonging.

“Snort fabric softener with Stempel & get high on bananas that taste like nail polish as they delight in alliteration and repetition, in the exchange between domesticity, microbiology, and the body.” — S. Brook Corfman, author of My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites (Fordham University Press, 2020) and Luxury, Blue Lace (Autumn House, 2019)

“In this farm-to-table recipe book for dismantling the patriarchy and the matriarchy, R. Stempel is an impeccable guide to what is edible, what is permissible and what is impermissibly alluring.” — Judith Baumel, author of The Weight of Numbers (Wesleyan Poetry Series, 1988), Now (University of Miami Press, 1996), The Kangaroo Girl (GenPop Books, 2011), and Passeggiate (Arrowsmith Press, 2019)

“These poems have mukbang energy: they’re gross, lusty, indulgent, and hard to unsee.” — Jan-Henry Gray, author of Documents (Winner of the BOA Editions’ 2018 A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize) and the chapbook, Selected Emails (speCt! Books)

A microchapbook compiling a series of Craigslist Personals posted between 2017 and 2018 and the responses received.