Girl's Guide to Leaving

by Laura Villareal

Tumbleweeds and wandering cacti litter the page, coyotes croon at the prose. In poems haunted by specters of intimate partner violence, Girl’s Guide to Leaving considers what it means to escape the love that trapped you and find a temporary home in the barely cooled ashes of a wildfire.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 2022

About the author

Laura Villareal is a poet and book critic. Her debut poetry collection, Girl’s Guide to Leaving, (University of Wisconsin Press 2022) was awarded Texas Institute of Letters' John A. Robert Johnson Award for a First Book of Poetry and the Writers' League of Texas Book Award for Poetry. ​She earned an MFA at Rutgers University—Newark and has been the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, National Book Critics Circle’s Emerging Critics Program, VONA, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at University of Texas-Austin.

She is currently an associate with Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where she co-edits and writes for Letras Latinas Blog 2, in addition to working on other related projects.

Reviews

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is easily one of my favorite poetry collections! Laura doesn’t just show, she often tells, and she does it masterfully. And you might be thinking, “But Kayla, isn’t poetry suppose to show and not tell?” And yes that is often the rule, but some people are so talented at telling that they make it work, and Laura absolutely does. Topics ranging from love, DV/DA, and queerness, healing and hurting, with a mix in of Mexican folklore. It’s amazing and you should definitely read it.

[Suzy Kopf · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection to start the new year off with so much imagery from the natural world. A favorite line, "I sold my own heart/with a sign that said: haunted/ free or best offer".

[Jac Collo · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I am nothing / if not determined to re-create myself as a god."

There was a lot to love about Villareal's collection of poetry, and I found myself particularly drawn in by her use of folklore and "(My)thology" throughout. Each line was wrought with emotion and memory in a way that felt tangible and sensory; beauty in the absence of belonging through the order of each and every word.

I felt myself less immersed in the last quarter but could definitely see myself rereading the majority of these poems a dozen times over.

[Nori Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-have poetry collection for any girl who has ever left a situation that was killing her. Raw, ethereal, and brimming with the mythic.