Counterweights

by Kestral Gaian

Travel and stillness. Material objects and abstract creation. Counterweights, Kestral Gaian's first solo collection, is a look into the duality of the world around us. Split into three sections - Concavity, Convexity, and Complexity - and with recurrent themes of illness and beauty living side-by-side, this book explores the ideas of love being helpless, humanity being destructive, and of change being a constant companion to us all.

120 pages, Paperback

First published December 20, 2016

About the author

Kestral Gaian is an author, poet, and playwright whose work refuses to sit neatly inside a box. Their writing inhabits the places where genres overlap and come undone: the personal and the political, the digital and the human, the soft and the furious. Kestral’s work is defined by a deep belief that stories can help us practise being better humans. Or at least weirder, kinder ones.

Kestral's background is wide ranging, from psychotherapy to technology to community activism, and this diversity infuses their art. Audiences and readers often describe being moved not just by what Kestral writes, but by how it feels to inhabit the worlds they create: playful, thoughtful, deeply human.

Whether writing poetry, plays, lyrics, or fiction, Kestral Gaian is committed to work that challenges, delights, and endures. Their voice is one of defiance and tenderness, of systems questioned, and of
humanity held close.