Poetry. Jewish Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Women's Studies. Lisa Hiton's AFTERFEAST grapples with big stuff--painful history, gorgeous and fraught geographies, elusive sexual identity--in an authentic, dauntless voice that lends to these large subjects a gripping intimacy. To read these poems is to stand among haunted ruins on 'the hot slab of history, ' to witness different kinds of survival, how disappeared and durable spaces endure alike in time, and in a mind. I envy readers their first entry into the ripe world of this book. A stunningly mature debut--symphonic and bracing and profound.--Maggie Dietz