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Future Tense
Not yet published
Expected 13 Oct 26Reckoning with infertility, adoption, and love under pressure, Kelly Grace Thomas’s
Future Tense
is a searing memoir-in-verse about a woman’s fight to become a mother while losing her own.
Thomas spends three years trying for a child who never arrives. As she struggles with infertility, her mother is dying of Stage IV uterine cancer, and the desire for a child turns urgent—a countdown. As her mother’s health deteriorates, time narrows, pressure builds, and the clock refuses to slow. As her marriage strains and the world remakes itself without her, Thomas refuses to give up. The fertility clinic is the coldest place on earth; still, she keeps going—through years of medical gaslighting, IVF consults, mounting debt, and backhanded blame—finally welcoming her daughter through adoption just months before her mother’s death.
Intimate and unflinching, Future Tense interrogates the intertwined joys and griefs of womanhood and motherhood—and how biology can sometimes turn against us. Thomas approaches illness and loss with clarity and care, writing with a generosity that welcomes listeners in. Despite their brevity, these poems refuse despair, finding meaning and connection even in the hardest seasons of life.
Thomas spends three years trying for a child who never arrives. As she struggles with infertility, her mother is dying of Stage IV uterine cancer, and the desire for a child turns urgent—a countdown. As her mother’s health deteriorates, time narrows, pressure builds, and the clock refuses to slow. As her marriage strains and the world remakes itself without her, Thomas refuses to give up. The fertility clinic is the coldest place on earth; still, she keeps going—through years of medical gaslighting, IVF consults, mounting debt, and backhanded blame—finally welcoming her daughter through adoption just months before her mother’s death.
Intimate and unflinching, Future Tense interrogates the intertwined joys and griefs of womanhood and motherhood—and how biology can sometimes turn against us. Thomas approaches illness and loss with clarity and care, writing with a generosity that welcomes listeners in. Despite their brevity, these poems refuse despair, finding meaning and connection even in the hardest seasons of life.
100 pages, Paperback
Expected publication October 13, 2026
About the author
Kelly Grace Thomas
6 books33 followersKELLY GRACE THOMAS, poet, writer, and coach, is the author of Future Tense (forthcoming from Alice James Books, 2026) and Boat Burned (YesYes Books, 2020). She is the winner of the Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and the Neil Postman Award for Metaphor. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: The Sun, The Adroit Journal, 32 Poems, Los Angeles Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. She is also co-author of poetry curricula including Voices in Verse: Poetry, Identity, and Ethnic Studies, Stanzas of America: Celebrating BIPOC Poetry, and Words Ignite: Explore, Write, and Perform Classic and Spoken Word Poetry (Get Lit), which are currently taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Randolph College.www.kellygracethomas.com
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 23, 2026
FUTURE TENSE is of the most powerful narrative poetry collections I’ve ever read. Thomas’s collection is clean and sharp and laden with love. More than just a group of well-crafted poems, Thomas really brings you through a complete story from beginning to end. I was completely immersed.
I believe this is a book anybody could read and enjoy regardless of their background or familiarity with poetry, but I’d recommend it specifically to mothers, and those that have dealt with fertility issues.
*I received an ARC of this collection from the publisher!*
I believe this is a book anybody could read and enjoy regardless of their background or familiarity with poetry, but I’d recommend it specifically to mothers, and those that have dealt with fertility issues.
*I received an ARC of this collection from the publisher!*
Displaying 1 of 1 review