Martha Serpas is the author of three collections of poetry, including The Diener and The Dirty Side of the Storm. Her work has appeared in the Nation, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Poetry, and elsewhere. A native of south Louisiana, she coproduced Veins in the Gulf, a documentary on Louisiana’s coastal land loss. She teaches creative writing at the University of Houston and is a hospital chaplain.

Praise for The Diener

“Serpas is interested in the descents we face: into old age, illness, and death. . . . Most of her poems are about near death experiences, whether literal, imagined, or figurative, but all pack a punch.”—Houston Chronicle

“[Serpas’s] poems present a consciousness struggling to make meaning from the chaotic and overwhelming flux of day-to-day experience – both the mundane and the momentous. . . . Meaning, it seems, nudges from just beyond the straightforward syntax and structure of the poem.”—Fogged Clarity

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