Apostasies

by Holli Carrell

Holli Carrell’s debut collection Apostasies explores Mormon girlhood, the American West, matriarchal lineage, indoctrination, estrangement, and the lingering ramifications of being raised within a repressive and patriarchal American religious ideology. Interweaving prose, documentary poems, translations, erasures, and spare, imagistic lyrics, Apostasies aims to recover and reclaim the body by its own definition. Casting her experience within the broader narrative of Mormonism, Carrell unpacks the fraught history of gender and polygamy in nineteenth-century Mormonism, exposing the sexual predation and grooming tactics used by Joseph Smith—Mormonism’s founder—on his thirty-three “wives,” many of whom were fourteen to eighteen years old at the time of their marriage. Courageous and defiant, the poems in Apostasies ultimately celebrate doubt and disobedience; they challenge oppressive constructions of womanhood and cisnormativity, in particular rejecting motherhood, “obedience,” and religious traditions that vilify independent thought and bodily autonomy.

Genres: Poetry

142 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2025

About the author

Holli Carrell (she/they) was born and raised in Utah and now lives in the Midwest. Her debut poetry collection, APOSTASIES, won the 2025 Perugia Press Prize and is forthcoming in September 2025. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati— where she was a 2024-2025 Taft Research Center Dissertation Fellow— as well as an M.F.A. from Hunter College. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Fence, Gulf Coast, 32 Poems, Poetry Northwest, The Journal, Bennington Review, and Ninth Letter, among others. She currently serves as a manuscript reader for Acre Books.

Reviews

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apostasies is memoir, documentary, and beautifully worked poetry combined. Each line is an opening, adding deep resonance to the poems' movement. Apostasies composes a personal history (growing up in and away from the Mormon faith) to a rich symphonic whole.

[M Delea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great new book of poetry (with some prose). The poet has escaped a polygamous religion and this book records her experiences in that cult. There is also a great deal about the founders, in reference to their many wives. The poet, through the poems’ speaker, unveils the practice of polygamy from a feminist perspective and gives voice to women and girls—long dead—who were forced into these marriages.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Apostasies is a masterclass in transformational poetry. Holli Carrell’s unflinching collection dissects a childhood marked by rigid religion and revels in a bodymind that found its voice. If your faith has changed, or you know others who are de/reconstructing religious beliefs, you’ll want to keep this book closeby.

[Susan L. L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holli Carrell’s APOSTASIES is, as the title promises, a book of refusals rooted in the fierce interrogation of the indoctrinations, disguises, and violences of the LDS Church, each refusal relentlessly enacted. The first: that of the religious footnote, Carrell’s speaker presenting “the biblical story” as lived, tangible reality. Also: the refusal of inheritance, of blind faith, of the perpetuation of harm. Lot’s wife is punished for looking, but Carrell’s speaker looks harder, accountable as much to her own girlhood, body, and self-authored desire as to the long line of women who have suffered the ravages of the Church. Poem after poem, we are shown that to document is to offer an indictment. To say, here are the facts, history, experience, and reflection extended with tender and necessary deliberation as well as brute force. This book is truly an achievement: a mixture of poetry and prose, linguistically and formally innovative, deeply researched, critical, narrative, highly imagistic, and deserving of a place in every classroom. 10/10 recommend!

[Carolyn]

(Read as a judge for an indie book publishers award.)