Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming

by Eli Clare

A queer disabled love song to trees and beavers, tremors and dreams, Unfurl explores the pulsing core and porous edges of survival, sorrow, and dreaming. Blending poetry and creative nonfiction, emotion and activist thinking, Eli Clare invites us to unfurl ourselves into the lovely multitude of genders beyond the binary of woman and man, the fierceness of street protest, and the long slow time of granite. He sings to aquifers. Wrestles with the aftermath of child abuse and his family’s legacy as white settlers occupying Dakota homelands. He leans into history. Calls the names of the living and the dead. Connects his own tremoring body to a world full of tremors—earthquakes, jackhammers, quaking aspens. Unfurl reveals deep queer kinships between human and more-than-human, sentient and nonsentient. At every juncture, these poems and essays embrace porousness and the power of dreaming. Ultimately, Unfurl is an invitation to rebellion and joy.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction, Poetry, Queer

192 pages, Hardcover

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain in occupied Abenaki territory (also known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written two books of essays, the award-winning Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, and a collection of poetry, The Marrow's Telling: Words in Motion. Additionally he has been published in dozens of journals and anthologies.

Eli works as a traveling poet, storyteller, and social justice educator. Since 2008, he has spoken, taught, and consulted (both in-person and remotely) at well over 150 conferences, community events, and colleges across the United States and Canada. He currently serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Disability Project at the Transgender Law Center and is also a 2020 Disability Futures Fellow (funded by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation). Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference.

When he's not writing or on the road, you can find him reading, camping, riding his recumbent trike, and otherwise having fun adventures.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous book, highly recommended! Eli Clare has a singular, hard won perspective and an incandescent voice. The right book for the current dystopian moment. Sustenance, tremors, and relief. Mwah!