Newly Released! November 1, 2023
University of Michigan Press

Millions of Suns is a collection of personal essays that not only delve into the craft elements of writing (metaphor, inspiration, place, surprise, imagery, and more) but explore what it means to be a writer and a creative soul. Dynamic and engaging writing prompts guide readers toward the freedom and joy that comes with finding one’s authentic voice.

Save 30% off Millions of Suns with Code UMF23

Also Avaiilable at White Whale Bookstore https://whitewhalebookstore.com/ and Amazon.

Poetry

“In Life Without Furniture ‘the whole visible world flows through one white birch.’ Sharon Fagan McDermott inhabits the spaces between the common and the uncommon: the rich landscapes between ‘A State of Un-Union’ and ‘Driving Home After Singing at Club Café,’ the ineffable sensations between ‘The Geography of Solitude’ and ‘The Hymn of Constellations.’ Even the poems’ titles signal the many resonances of Life Without Furniture. The whole world, visible and invisible, inhabits this wonderful new book.”

~ Terrance Hayes
2010 Nathional Book Award Winner for Lighthead (Penguin Books, March 30, 2010)

Poetry

“Sharon McDermott has an acute musical ear, and the life of sound, and how it intensifies feeling, is everywhere in Bitter Acoustic. ‘Then drizzle blew the night to pins’ is an instance early in these pages. The book, for me, begins in blues, rueful, not self-pitying; wise, but caught. Then in the second part of the book, the ground begins to shift: the poetry itself seems happy to be joyful, and gains life from it. A hard-earned, beautiful book.”

~Jean Valentine, National Book Award Winner Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

Poetry

“Like alleys themselves, Sharon McDermott’s poems are tough, gritty and sometimes violent. They are also lively, daring, on edge, and filled with ironic juxtapositions. Many of the poems are literally set in alleyways; others deal with metaphoric passages such as adolescence, midlife, death, sex changes, and daydreams. McDermott is intrigued by “fringe space[s],” the “in-between world[s]” that constitute a “crack between ordered lives,” where “boundaries [are] breached/and breached again.” After all, “in-between is/both about erasure and new blooming.”

~ from Parallel Press website