Tanya Manning-Yarde's Blog

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This is the one-year anniversary since I self-published my debut book of poetry, Every Watering Word. It’s been a wonderful and yet overwhelming experience at the same time. Wonderful in terms of poems that I have written for over 20 years culminating in book form. That my book is getting out into the world, into the hands and hearts of others. Yet, overwhelming in that the publicity required to make this book thrive is serious heavy lifting, lifting that is unfamiliar to me. Like living in a foreign country whose tongue I do not know and what little I do know I trip up in speaking.  A year in, I’m just learning to navigate this new domain of book publicity with some success.

As an indie author, I am learning a lot from my achievements and blunders. Doing my own marketing for my book, and a fledging at that, here’s some suggestions for what to consider when you independently publish your book. I’ll share some things about my experience in retrospect, as well as epiphanies I am now learning as I go.

It’s not enough to complete the manuscript. Complete a marketing plan. When I finished my manuscript, I was so thrilled that it was done! I proofed it, selected an independent press, created the cover and sent it off for printing and publishing.  The question I had not considered alongside my struggle of completing the book was how would people find out about my book? Just because your book is available for purchase does not mean everyone will instantly know about it. Your book being available through online sites does not mean such forums will instantly provide enough promotion. As an indie author, if you don’t outsource the marketing of your book and instead plan to do it yourself, several things you will need to consider and master. Create a plan in which you identify (1) your reading audience, (2) the social media influencers that impact and have access to that audience, (3) the places where you can do readings of your work and (4) a timeframe for rolling out your book promotion BEFORE and AFTER your book is released. The first two recommendations I’ll tackle here.

Selecting criteria to identify my target audience is challenging and ever changing. My life occurs within multiple intersections. Woman. Mother. Wife. Educator. Blogger. Poet. Christian. African-American. Those are the “big” ones alongside others. My challenge is to convincingly build bridges between the things I write with the intersections and experiences of others.  My friends and people in my immediate circles of influence are awesome supporters who oblige the purchase and support of my book, but beyond that, how to figure out a larger possible audience remains a mystery. I’ve whittled it down to demographics of people with similar intersectionalities, however, that “conclusion” is diminutive and presumptive. Bestselling mass market books access not just a swath but a swarm of people from various walks of life.

I identify my (hopeful) reading audience as being diverse and global. I want my book to reach an international audience because the poems included in the book, though personal and grounded in my specific life, deal with universal themes found across our individual human experiences. Also, because several of the book’s poems have a journalistic lens to them—examining themes, issues and experiences of people worldwide and on a global scale—I thought the book would appeal to readers worldwide.

So, I’m venturing out to test what other broader audiences might be interested. I am corresponding with representatives from book clubs, individual book bloggers and reviewers who live worldwide, and bookstagrammers.

Create a reputation for your book by getting others to review it. Build outward from close cadre to influential reviewers. When I set out on my plan to solicit reviewers globally, I began with first garnering reviews from people already familiar with me as a person or with my work. I assembled a small cadre for reviews, asking acquaintances, friends, family, neighbors, mentors, fellow writers, former colleagues and students to share their reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. They pulled through for me and were phenomenal in their reactions and responses to the book. They came from various perspectives and considerations. Although I did not always agree with what they said, each was authentic in his or her reactions. Their reviews, and the topical diversity throughout each of them, provided the fodder I needed to share in my pitch letters to potential reviewers who knew nothing about me, with the hope that these reviews would intrigue and entice such reviewers enough to read and review my book for themselves.

I use Instagram to find and identify potential reviewers. Using the analytics on my account(@every_watering_word_author), I had some useful baseline information. More women than men engage and follow my account. My account has the most engagement from major metropolitan cities in the United States. Using this information to engage and appeal to such audiences with whom I have had the least appeal to date, I set out to identify men who might be interested in reviewing my book, as well as audience members globally. To potentially expand my reach, I began looking for potential reviewers through targeted hashtags (#bookclub, #bookreview, #bookstagrammer, #bookish, #menread, #untwineme and #bymepoetry to name a few). It can also be daunting given the massive access to data and people that is ever changing by the minute (literally). I feel at times that I am digging through massive data deposits, not always sure of ranking and relevance, but poring through them nonetheless to learn more. But I have been successful in reaching people globally to review my book. Reviews of the book have come from people throughout the United States as well as British Columbia, Quebec, Dubai, Switzerland, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the Philippines. One reviewer reading my work currently resides in Qatar.

Create criteria for how you select reviewers of your book. I first began with thinking to go for the most popular bookstagrammers and booktubers, the ones who have tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of followers. After assessing their writing and visual aesthetics, I contacted several. Given the math, I figured one post about my book could reach thousands of followers, and if just 10% of those followers purchase the book, well it will sell well in no time. That is rarely the case. As I later found out, many are sponsored and subsidized by large publishing houses to promote their books. Even those that do accept reviewing your book do always follow through with reviewing it and promoting it on their social media platforms. For those that do follow through, it can take months given their backlog of books to read. Such reviewers are longshots, but perhaps still worth a try for that big break if you can afford mailing books nationally and internationally (as I did several times).

So, I revised my targeting to include different criteria—booktubers and bookstagrammers who have smaller numbers of followers (the range being from a few hundred to few thousand), reviewers that had niches of books they read and/or who had specific audience members they themselves target. My thinking now is to create a groundswell, to build momentum across various groups rather than target the big few influencers with the hopes of making a blip on their radars.

Create a campaign for your book that includes YOU in it. Slightly separate but related to promoting your book, consider that you need to promote yourself as well. You must create a successfully married portrait of book and author for your audience. Advice I’ve been given in how to use Instagram is to provide a variety of posts that do not convey your talent exclusively but who you are as a person as well.  People like to know that you are real, not just a steady and ongoing advertisement or bot always asking people to buy your book. Here I’ll talk about what I did with my Instagram site to improve its content and potential reach (I also have Twitter and Facebook accounts, but have devoted a different type of work in promoting them).

So, I started my account with first highlighting excerpts of my book. That is when this same friend suggested including photos. Then I began including lots and lots of family photos, but feedback I got from this same friend is that the site can confuse audience members, as the confluence of images could make it difficult to determine whether the site is about me as a mother or about my book and me as a writer.

My alacrity and discernment are evolving.  Decisively, my site rotates excerpts of (1) my poems, (2) reviews people are saying about my work and (3) various posts of my other published works (including book and movie reviews and feature articles). I also include a few family and personal pics, just a few, so viewers can get a sense of who I am as a writer and a person. I also include inspirational words and phrases to inspire others because that’s who I am. I try to I say and do things to help others around me.

I hope this has been a helpful piece to read as you navigate the expression and exposure of your new (or current) publication.

 

Helpful links:

Link to Goodreads reviews of Every Watering Word:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37692918-every-watering-word?ac=1&from_search=true#other_reviews

 

Link to my Instagram account (@every_watering_word_author)

https://www.instagram.com/every_watering_word_author/

 

Links to various Instagram, blog and magazine reviews of Every Watering Word:

Melan Mag: http://melanmag.com/2018/09/09/why-yo...

Elgee Writes: https://elgeewrites.com/review-shots-...

Konstantin Kulakov:  https://www.instagram.com/p/BmtGrXol8Qh/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

In Tori Lex:  http://www.intorilex.com/2018/07/review-every-watering-word-by-tanya.html

Amy’s Bookshelf:  https://www.amybucklesbookshelf.co.uk/2018/05/every-watering-word-book-review.html

 

Link to Amazon reviews of Every Watering Word:

 

 

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Advice for the aspiring indie author…

Here’s some things I’ve learned along the way as I reach the one-year mark of publishing my first book of poetry, Every Watering Word.

1. Write. Every day. Carve out time for your voice. Don’t sit back on the accomplishments you have achieved. As soon as you publish, KEEP WRITING. #writingisbreathingthroughink

2. As an indie author, I’m finding that you are your marketing and PR point-person. Try to participate in readings and venues as much as possible. Libraries, friend’s homes, bookstores, cafes, etc. I may be stating the obvious, but I’m learning that as your own promoter you have to create spaces for your work to be seen and shared.

3. Create a network of fellow writing friends to support your plowing, progress and revisions. I have my star player and sister of decades Carla who I throw EVERYTHING at. Rough drafts, revisions, complaints, frustrations. She is awesome in her analyses and tolerance and no-joke about not letting me sit on my tush and remain immobile. My sister Fisiwehas a discerning spirit and deliberate eye that helped shaped the order of poems in my book, and how I think about writing as a transcendental and transformative experience. Conversations and messages with Tricia keep my head and heart spooling with ideas.

4. Solicit others for reviews of your work. Word of mouth, blurbs, formal and informal reviews really help to push your work out there. Be fearless in your reach, precise in your request. But please know for every 10 potential reviewers you solicit, you may only get 1 or 2 to respond. But what has been a blessing for me is that in targeting an international crowd, my work has been in the hands of so many interesting people from not only here in the USA but around the world. Dubai, Switzerland, Ontario, Quebec, Britain, Portugal and the Philippines are just a few of the locales of bloggers and bookstagrammers that have read and reviewed my work. So while I would LOVE to be on the NYT or LAT bestseller lists, I’m content (for now) that the reach of my work and its footprints are worldwide. To know my work is in the hands of so many people I have not met, WOW. Incredible and humbling.

5. Instagram is frustrating me (FOR REAL!) from a marketing and promoting stance. These algorithms. Man. If you do not have the “right” hashtags and numeric quantity of followers that elevate you to the status of influencer, you are a relegated to being a minnow in multiple oceans! Here, you’ll have to make a decision about how you want to build your audience, and for what purpose in the marketing and selling of yourself. But I’m still learning the forum, its flaws and finery, as I go.

6. On the other hand, Instagram proves to be a great forum for exchanging ideas and opportunities. As an author and human being, it has been so helpful in gaining access to and corresponding with great people worldwide, introducing me to thoughts, ideas and perspectives I might not otherwise know. It’s a great highway into other possibilities. As a writer, I am growing.

What writing advice do you have for indie authors?

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Book Review of Black Ribisi by Rasheem Rooke. Must add to your TBR list.

I am just beginning to read Black Ribisi, the breakout novel by Rasheem Rooke. I am late to the party as Rooke’s book was published in 2015 (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform). However, I am glad I was invited in the form of a request for a book review. I am all in after just a few pages.

I’ll talk about elements of the book that impress me. So far, the story is fast-paced. Heavy in content but not weighted down by wordiness. Prose are not cluttered or hampered by overabundant and unnecessary words. Exposition is not saturated by explanation. The writing is nimble, sharp and knife-like with its precision.

The economy of words pulls you into the bullseye of the story.

Humpty.

Malak.

A meeting.

Money.

Machete.

Murder.

And that’s just the prologue.

Rooke has a keen ear for pithy and precise dialogue. It is not the language used by an aloof writer writing dialogue in an isolated part of a coffee shop. The dialogue is not contrived, reading more like a transcript. Rooke clearly has done his homework. His ears are on the pulse. He listens closely to the mouths of others. A camouflaged bystander, someone sitting on a park bench mentally recording elicit snatches of passing exchanges. A deft detective effective at eliciting truth from what people say and do. Rooke is discerning not only with his ears but also his eyes, capturing in dialogue not only what is said but how. He has an ear for intonation and intent. Myopic descriptors don’t blunder the writer’s work. The characters do their jobs.

Anthony “Black” Ribisi, aka Jelani Jones, is the narrator who is unsparing in his first-person account of what is happening around him. He is a man of many sides and many side hustles. Organized crime. Childhood friend to Coco. Like the narrator of Ellison’s Invisible Man, the lights are on only when he wants them, and only when he wants you to see him. We see a world selectively crafted. We are told only what we need to know precisely when we need to know it.

Who is Ribisi is not only the question Rooke explores throughout Black Ribisi, but it is one Ribisi explores within himself.

Now I return to reading, as Rooke’s sequel, Broken Brotherhood, is due to be out June 2018.

 

 

 

 

 

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(Spoiler Alert)

The Phoenix is an iconic symbol of restoration and resurrection.  It purges itself of impurities, the things which have tainted its purpose. Through self-induced immolation, it destroys impurities.  Through purification-by-fire, ashes become the pristine tools the Phoenix exhumes to press forward and persist. Reclaim. Renew. Reinvigorate. Perhaps this trifecta of restoration is Thanos’ goal. Perhaps the case can be made that the titanic virtuoso of Marvel Studio’s newest release Avengers: Infinity War harbors not only villainy but also virtue.

Induced immolation is not the most palatable means to transformation.  It exacts compliance and great cost. From Thanos’ perspective, civilizations do not know what is best for themselves, his proof being their demonstrative succumbing to the self-inflicted burdens of over-population and lack of resources. Perhaps from his perspective his actions are benevolent. However, whether it’s the gilded goliaths of Asgard or the peaceful inhabitants of Zen-Whoberi, his targeted purge is not by invitation.

Thanos’ mathematical imposition is executed by The Black Order, and as articulated by the docile-voiced yet merciless Ebony Maw, those who submit to his purge will be the better for it. Thanos is judge and jury, while his black-hearted “children” are the executioners of his will.  The Infinity stones augment the myriad means Thanos can inflict the purging massacre and its scale. True to form, Thanos wields his agenda relentlessly and ruthlessly.

Thanos’ agenda exacts a blood-price.  Despite the spectral Red Skull’s warning, Thanos tearfully sacrifices the life of supplanted but beloved adopted daughter Gamora. A huge price to pay for the Infinity Soul Stone but paid nonetheless. Consequently, nothing about Thanos seems redeemable by this deplorable act and others.

By the movie’s end, perhaps such amassed power is not the target of his affection and actions.

What exactly is Thanos’ motivation for imposing such correction, to extol while extort such a toll? One would think, simply, it is to be master of the universe, to wield indomitable authority over all. There is clear evidence this is his self-imposed charge throughout the nearly three-hour movie.

But maybe, just maybe, Thanos melds virtue and venom in pursuit of a loftier goal.

While historical precedents and narrative convention lead us to think that a villain pursues ultimate power for self-promotion and gain, and therefore unredeemable, the final scenes of the movie (after the Wakanda battle and retrieval of the Mind Stone from The Vision) leads us to think the hardened heart and the unyielding power of Thanos’ gauntlet are for something more sentimental. Perhaps the goal is the restoration of his own hurt heart, his yearning for his homeland. When Thanos surveys the expanse of new corpses and smoldering cinders, the ravaging purge yields a homeland he can smile upon, where he can dwell again.

Perhaps Thanos’ rapturous destruction and carnage can be seen as a tool of a larger universe’s self-correction, also be perceived as a means for restoring, renewing, even reconciling the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy unto themselves. They have sustained massive casualties to their friendships and lives constantly combatting governmental nemeses, arch rivals, civil wars between friend and personal demons.  Yet the threat of Thanos is alarming enough to them all to return from their personal retreats and corners of the world to assemble. The vile, villainous Thanos provides enough of a threat to them all (and life everywhere) that they are willing to put personal differences aside and amass the wealth of their powers to fight for something bigger than squabbles, principles, and bruised egos. Having a common enemy will do that.

Yet the “virtue” that Thanos instigates out of the Avengers and Guardians comes with a price. In the over 14 million possible outcomes Dr. Strange tells Iron Man he could see in foraging the future, there is only one outcome the Avengers can win. At the end of the movie, it means even several of them are returned to ashes. A vicious toll exacted by a virtuous villain?

 

 

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As the mother and father of two young boisterous boys, finding time for a date night is at a premium. Typically, when trying to go to the movies, we just decide to go at separate times. For my husband, it usually means seeing it immediately when it opens. For me it means seeing it when it finally comes on cable. But through some finagling of schedules, including the taking of a day off from work as well as the fortune of finding a 10AM showing, we dropped the kids off at their schools and embarked on a 20-minute drive on the highway to a remote theatre to watch the much-anticipated Black Panther movie. Fans of Marvel characters since birth, avid followers of the Avengers saga since 2008’s Iron Man, we have been waiting years for THIS character to come to life on the big screen.

Black Panther did not disappoint. As director and co-writer, the imaginative, clever and undaunted Ryan Coogler did his due diligence.  The cinematography, costuming and choreography are just some of the hallmarks of Black Panther’s power. Yet what resonates, what had my husband and I sitting in the theatre long after the credits finished, long after clearing our dinner table and preparing the boys for bed, is the intricacy and humanity of the movie. The story arc and characterizations coalesce like a strand of DNA, as numerous nucleotides harmoniously work together so that the chromosome successfully expresses itself and functions effectively. Coogler, masterful like the quilters of the Sea Islands, builds a story block by block, successfully weaving into a sonorous concert both compelling themes and complex characters. In so doing, he builds for us as the eyewitnesses a grand canvas that illustrates the wonder and woes befallen the nation of Wakanda and the fitful evolution of its native son and king T’Challa.

The women of Wakanda defy convention, gender-based assumptions and typecasting. They are inventive, innovative, loyal, strategic, physically agile and scientifically mindful. In short, the sisters are BAD, portrayed as multi-faceted, multi-dimensional and multi-informed. There is the general, Oyoke, leader of the all-female Dora Milaje charged with protecting the king. The Dora Milaje are guardswomen, weapons of war that are dutiful and devoted. Exemplified by Oyoke, she is a leader emboldened by loyalty and logic. There is Nakia, a spry and noble spy, who immerses herself in danger, travailing in helping others less fortunate to harvest their freedom (note in the movie her rescue of the captives that mirrors the real life 2014 abduction of schoolgirls by the Boko Haram). Nakia is compelled by a higher calling and focus to serve a greater good, even to the delay of amorous inclinations toward T’Challa. There is the brilliant and sharp-witted Shuri, the younger sibling of T’Challa. She is talented in technological and medicinal arts and dexterous with words. Astute, she is protective and instinctive in thinking one-step ahead of what those around her need, creating inventions that speak to what they will need when times call for action. They are characters whose attributes are unique and well-integrated, which they each masterfully illustrate throughout various moments of conflict within the story. The casino scene and car chase set in South Korea is one supreme example.

The men of Wakanda possess complexity as well, even vulnerability.  There is the typical depiction of manliness expected in any superhero action film, as death-defying stunts and combat sequences are well represented in Black Panther. True to genre and form, the male characters in Black Panther are strong, virile, combative and phenomenal in physical strength. However, their depictions are neither stereotypical or exploitative. These African and African-American characters are also remarkable in their counsel, mental agility and emotional fragility.  W’Kabi is the leader of a shepherding tribe (shepherds to rhinos mind you) who is haunted by the murder of his parents: it is this haunting that will, later in the film, come to bear on whom he decides to align his allegiance when the right to the throne is tested. M’Baku, leader of an ostracized tribe in the mountains, comes to challenge T’Challa during the ritual ceremony where the next ascendant to the throne can be challenged in mortal combat. M’Baku is humiliated in his defeat yet will be an unanticipated ally and avenger when the soul of the Wakandan people is gravely tested. T’Challa exudes the attributes of a kingly statesman and honorable man, loyal to family and country, yet a man who when unforeseen challenges to his birthright occur, unveils a vulnerability that if not reckoned with will cause him to lose both his nation and his life. N’Jakada, also known as Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, is T’Challa’s nemesis, hellbent on literally disemboweling T’Challa and the kingdom of Wakanda. Yet the reasons behind Killmonger’s intentions and actions are noble and speak to avenging afflicted people dwelling worldwide.  Shunned and abandoned when young, he channels his hurt and chisels his personal pain into tools, tools that are toned less to avenge himself and the homicide that has left him to fend for himself, but, ironically, to soothe the suffering of those of African descent worldwide.  The multi-dimensional aspects of Black Panther’s men are effectively and impressively explored and illustrated throughout the film.

In complement to Black Panther’s complex and richly layered characters, Coogler has created circumstances that do not just illustrate the good attributes of a character, but how his or her complicatedness comes to bear on the hard choices s/he must make and hard consequences s/he must face. Explored within the film are filial and fraternal ties that both bind and blind. The sins of the fathers (in this case, two brothers) are visited upon the sons (in this case, two first-cousins). This kink in inherited armor, the avoidable wounding and self-inflicted vulnerability that then consequently pits a bloodline against itself, is brought to bear on their shoulders and actions. Killmonger is a vicious and vindictive rebel yet with a noble cause and benevolent calling. He positions himself not fallen but in preparation for war-based advocacy for the less fortunate, preparing to employ Wakanda’s technological advances with all he has learned from previous military service and participation in deadly covert operations. He plans to steal and proliferate Wakanda’s advancements for a greater good, even if it means a worldwide war waged without Wakanda’s consent. While demonstrative of virility, vengeance and vindication, Killmonger is a complex character that brings his pain to bear on a greater good. Consequently, T’Challa mourns the unabashed hurt and affliction unfairly inflicted upon his cousin. But his cousin’s pain and its wrath place him in precarious positions where he must govern his guilt as well as his protection of family and country.

In Black Panther, characters are also wrought with a love of country that at times places them in opposition to one another. A thick yet conflicting love that brings brother against brother, subject against ruler, countrymen against countrymen, country against world. King T’Chaka (T’Challa’s father) kills his brother N’Jobu (Killmonger’s father) for betraying the country through the pillage of selling Vibranium on the black market. However, N’Jobu’s intentions in so doing was to help those afflicted worldwide through weaponry. Yet in an unforeseen and heated series of events leading to protecting a fellow countryman (Zuri, who later becomes a priest), leading “rightfully” to T’Chaka bringing judgment against N’Jobu for his betrayal of family and country, T’Chaka deserts and disavows his own nephew. Paradoxically, T’Chaka protects bloodline and country through the spilling of blood. However, the sins of the father are visited upon the sons.  And it comes to pass that cousins must as progenitors address and answer for their fathers’ betrayals of one another. Coogler does brilliant and methodical work in unfolding and revealing how complex characters work through complicated circumstances.

It is a love of country for which each character reconciles how best to be in its service. For some like T’Chaka and T’Challa, it means to protect its own borders exclusively, to preserve the advancements and prosperity of Wakanda strictly for its own benefit. Those of this isolationist mindset believe Wakanda’s advancements in medicine, technology and harnessing of extra-terrestrial resources (Vibranium) should remain under Wakandan protection and oversight exclusively. Others, like Nakia and Killmonger, subscribe to the tenet that Wakanda’s advances should be harvested and harnessed for a purpose outside its own invisible walls and for the good of those less fortunate. Yet Killmonger, himself in some respect an outsider to Wakanda, also believes Wakanda’s advancements should be used to bring an unrelenting wrath upon historical enemies, succumbing them to Wakanda’s rulership.

The fight for the governance of Wakanda occurs not only on earth but also in the heavens. This brings us to yet another layer that makes up the beauteous quilt that is the Black Panther movie. The kingdom of Wakanda is not built by one man or from one man’s vision, but by the presiding of elders and ancestors. The governance of Wakanda and its leaders is revealed through allusions to Christianity. There is the theme of baptism by water, dying to the flesh as T’Challa does via being stripped of his supernatural powers before fighting opponents who challenge his position on the throne. There is the burial of the body that occurs to restore wounds to the flesh, as well as serve as a portal to commune with ancestors for guidance. The burial, done in colored sand, also harkens to the Christian belief of being raised from the dead, resurrected if you will. This experience occurs with both T’Challa and Killmonger, who each consult with their fathers, seeking counsel and consolation.

There are some movies that in their ambition to tell an intricate story built from many parts lose its own focus and therefore its way, and thus the audience in such ambitious reach. The movie is left underdeveloped, as characters are incoherent and disengaging, and sub-themes are seemingly disconnected from a larger one. Without a vision a people perish, it is said, and such can become the fate of even a big-budget film. Yet Black Panther is not defeated in its ambitious reach to tell smaller stories, to interweave multi-dimensional characters, to convey complex truths and unpack historical conflicts in service to a greater story, a greater good. It excels.

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In her debut book of poetry, K. Desiree Milwood has created a pithy collection of short poems. Relying on haiku and senryu, two poetic structures that exact concise language and precise imagery, Milwood skillfully uses such structures to illustrate the prism of an intimate relationship. At times introspective and intimate, the reader’s head and heart are brought into her world. Neither sappy nor saccharine, her eloquent epiphanies and lamentations can be found throughout several of her haikus: “Showed you my hands, said/I have no tricks and hid my/heart behind my back,” “Archaeology/He dug in my soul to see/what I was made of” and “I want to kiss you/between your eyebrows and all/your inhibitions.” Other poems speak with lilted humor such as “I know God has a/plan for me but His poker/face is serious” and “Does my name come up/in your prayers as much as/it does your gossip?” In all, Milwood’s anecdotal writing gives food for thought. Her first book is a quick read in terms of page count, but not in content.

Poems for My Namesake is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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Please check out (and follow! :D) my new Instagram page for my debut book of poetry Every Watering Word. Includes visual excerpts from the book.And be sure to follow for updates!

 


https://www.instagram.com/every_watering_word/









 

“A beautiful piece of work that speaks directly to the soul. Every woman can relate to the images and feelings in poems like “A Mecca of Stretch Marks” or “Ester, Growing up Red”. The poems dive deep into race, class, gender and sexuality. Manning-Yarde’s words open hearts, soothe wounds and shine light into places hidden in shadow. A stunning commentary on life, love, politics and culture.”
–Lisa Sanon-Jules



Be sure to get your copy of Every Watering Word at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books123 or other outliets.





https://www.amazon.com/Every-Watering-Word-Tanya-Manning-Yarde/dp/1681112043/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1515016314&sr=8-1&keywords=every+watering+word