Our Book Choices

'Leaning Into the Abyss' - Amie McCracken

A woman in search of herself keeps on turning the kaleidoscope that is memory and life, searching for belonging and purpose, echoing into both past and future in a lyrical, deeply personal confession.

Our Voices is a melancholic personal narration of what happened in a given time and place to a young girl and her father in an oppressive system and how their story was carried to the next generation. It is also a warning of what could happen to anyone, anywhere, as well as a scream of indignation against social and political injustice, gender constraints, and historical erasure. Last but not least, it is a book of hope – the hope of integrating familial, historical, and social trauma into a bigger self, through language and nature.

Through personal storytelling, including a child perspective, terse poetry, myths, fairy-tales, imagery, social and political criticism, as well as some utopias/manifestos, Our Voices is an overcoming of the persistent horrors of communism and immigration; a book about living in the in-betweens and dreaming ourselves into more than mere survival; an invitation to its readers to bring out their own buried “shameful” family stories, to let them breathe and find resonance in the bigger world.


About The Author

Amie McCracken is an editor and book designer with two decades in the business. Co-owner and publishing director for Vine Leaves Press, a small press that blurs the line between commercial and experimental works, She is also one of the powerhouses behind Urban Writers’ Retreat, a program built to hold authors accountable and keep them motivated.

Amie has published three novels, a novella, and a non-fiction book since 2016.