AIM Higher, Inc. announces the release of Kim Noriega’s Naming the Roses, the author’s first full-length poetry collection, and the new nonprofit publisher’s second release. These are poems that “storm in with … [a] chilling juxtaposition of romance and violence in the strong unapologetic voice of a woman,” says Dr. Sarah Luczaj, author of 64 Changes.

Naming the Roses picks up where Ms. Noriega’s chapbook, Name Me, left off, adding 30+ poems that delve deeply into the effects of addiction and abuse. “Among the roses that Kim Noriega names,” says Cecilia Woloch, author of Carpathia, “are the bruises that bloom from sexual violence and the self that blossoms in the aftermath of the effort to love and love again.”

Of the earlier publication, Ellen Bass said: “These poems tell us the stories that live beneath the surface of our lives. These are poems that matter.”

Noriega is known for her intense, even brutal poems that confront male-on-female and family violence: the whispered-to-children-don’t-tell-anyone kind, the blackened eyes, the bruised throats. But as Luczaj notes: “She does not shrink from beauty either, a subtle beauty, infused with familiarity that makes her words feel like home.”

A prize-winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, and teacher, Noriega has been awarded the San Miguel Literary Sala Flash Nonfiction Prize and has been a finalist for both the Edna St. Vincent Millay and Joy Harjo Poetry Prizes. Her poem “Heaven, 1963” was featured in former poet laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated column American Life in Poetry. She is the poetry editor of The Poetry Distillery, a teaching artist with The Poetry Barn, and founder of The David Wade Hogue Poetry Scholarship through AIM Higher. A portion of the author’s proceeds from Naming the Roses will be donated to Kathy’s Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit serving children and pets impacted by domestic violence in San Diego County.

Dr. Luczaj concludes: “I only wish I could inhabit the unashamed, unpitying, beautiful, warm, defiant spirit of this book that rises off it like steam.”

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