"Jessica Rae Bergamino’s Girlhood x A Haunting summons the girl sleuth, Nancy Drew. Bergamino's gorgeous gurlesque poems take the reader on a tour of the horrors of high school ('Her ghosts push through her school’s green halls, laughing their stuffy laugh'), child abuse ('When my father corners his daughter in detail he warns her, at least, tells her, Nancy, I’m going to talk to you like a grown-up now, treat you like one, break the glass of my anger and let it evergreen in you, all myrtle and clove'), and trauma ('where your memory splits from sight'). True crime is popular because viewing violation provides the illusion of control in a culture where so many are unsafe. Bergamino’s book channels one of the OG feminist icons of the genre and empowers readers to navigate, perhaps even survive, the true crimes of childhood. I love this book."
 
— Claudia Cortese,
author of Wasp Queen
 
 
"Forget clues—the poems in Girlhood x A Haunting confront a new kind of investigation. How do you solve the mystery of a body when the body is your own? Through Bergamino’s signature and skilled voice, balanced formal tension, and adroit cross-examination of both history and memory, these poems build a new mythology for the queer detective work required of so many of us. Urgent, evocative, and, indeed, haunting, Bergamino has collected Nancy Drew and put her to work on the most vital of missions: self-reclamation. No other poet writing today could handle this case so deftly or with such clever care."
 
— Meg Day,
author of Last Psalm at Sea Level
 
 
"If you like your true crime, noir, and haunted house to have a little tongue in their cheek, bite in their bark, and redemption in their existential dread Jessica Rae Bergamino’s Girlhood x A Haunting is for you. It may also be about you. Were you, too, the queer dark-haired daughter—mouth stuffed with nails, body stuffed with brittle noise—of a conman and a bitter hiccup? Whose best friend, laughing like a silver bell, loved the worst men? Whose doctor flipped girl flesh inside out trying to disprove her mystery? Can you remember, yet? If it was anything like that, unbury yourself, Nancy. Look for me and [I] will look for you. And if it was nothing like that? Buckle-up buttercup. Golly and gasp, the poet rises from ash!"
 
— Danielle Pafunda, author of Along the Road Everyone Must Travel 
(winner of the Saturnalia Books 2023 Poetry Prize)
 
 
Author: Jessica Rae Bergamino
Genre: Poetry Collections
ISBN: 978-1-949065-34-3
Page Count: 124
Release Date: February 25 2025
 
**Cover Art by Ío Wuerich
**Cover Design by Sally Franckowiak, Sara Moore Wagner, & James McNulty