Hallelujah Science

City Books is pleased to carry HALLELUJAH SCIENCE, the debut collection of Kelli Stevens Kane. Kane is a Cave Canem Fellow, an August Wilson Center Fellow, and a recipient of Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grants from The Pittsburgh Foundation. She’s studied at VONA, Hurston/Wright, and Callaloo. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Little Patuxent Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, Painted Bride Quarterly, African Voices, and Split This Rock. She has read her poetry and oral history, and performed her one woman show, Big George, nationally.

Praise for HALLELUJAH SCIENCE

Hallelujah Science comes at you like a muted fever and suddenly you find yourself wanting to stomp and shout. Kane’s level of insight, revelation, and economy becomes a spiritual exodus to the lands of being Black, white, a poet, a woman, a shadow, and a human being. To be sure, when we use the phrase “dropping science,” Kane drops it on a regular basis in this book. Welcome to the science of living as a celebration to be questioned, laughed at, examined, and cut with verse so exact that you have to be willing to bleed to live. — Willie Perdomo, The Crazy Bunch, winner of the New York City Poetry Award

In this collection of sharp and tenderly rendered vignettes, Kelli Stevens Kane crafts a burgeoning, addictive narrative that draws from her prowess as a storyteller and a lover of history, sang long and aloud. — Patricia Smith, Incendiary Art, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

In medicinal song language Kelli Stevens Kane’s Hallelujah Science explores issues of identity, transformation, and the sacred nature of life itself. Kane’s lines are beatific as scripture verses, illuminating the threshold between life, spirit, and the afterlife. These poems acknowledge the relationality between all that exists. Hallelujah Science is a revelatory creation story and a gift to readers everywhere. — Lisa Panepinto, where i come from the fish have souls