University of Akron Press to Publish Cryptid by Annah Browning

The University of Akron Press is thrilled to announce that it will publish the poetry collection Cryptid by Annah Browning as part of the Akron Series in Poetry. Annah Browning is the author of the poetry collection Witch Doctrine (University of Akron Press, 2020) and the chapbook The Marriage (Horse Less Press, 2013), and is a cofounder of Grimoire Magazine. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, and other venues. She earned her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Hailing from the foothills of South Carolina, Browning currently calls southern Illinois home, where she is a professor of English at Blackburn College.

Regarding this collection, Browning states, “Cryptid takes on cryptids, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, and other weird phenomena—the weirdest of all being what it is to know and be known. Through the personas of a woman who desperately wants to be abducted by aliens and a female Sasquatch in search of a partner, as well as a host of other strange happenings and creatures from American folklore, this book explores the longing for something more that is buried in the heart of women’s domestic lives, and how those who are 'other' or different live in a world that too often leaves them alone. By turns irreverently funny, grotesquely bodily, and eerily heartbreaking, Cryptid insists on the beauty of the unseen and the disbelieved.”

The University of Akron Press plans to release Cryptid in 2026. Learn more about the Akron Series in Poetry here.