💀 GHOSTS, MEMORY, AND FEMINIST FIRE: CATHRYN SHEA’S GHOST MATINEE CALLS OUT THE PAST TO FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
PORTLAND, OR — April 22, 2025 — Unsolicited Press is proud to release GHOST MATINEE, the second full-length poetry collection from Cathryn Shea, an unapologetically fierce voice in contemporary American poetry. In an era when the past keeps clawing at our rights, our bodies, and our futures, Shea lights a match and walks straight into the haunted theater of memory—with her pen blazing and her ghosts unchained.
GHOST MATINEE is not a book that asks permission. It doesn’t pine for “the good old days.” Instead, it confronts them—rips the sheet off nostalgia, and exposes what’s lurking underneath: personal trauma, political residue, generational weight. In Shea’s world, the past isn’t gone—it’s active, inconvenient, and often complicit. And yet, she doesn’t stay buried there. With a poet’s precision and a feminist’s refusal to sit down and shut up, Shea turns the page toward a future that could be—if we dare to imagine it.
“The past is a frontier. The future is a sanctuary.”
With this mantra, GHOST MATINEE claims space for healing, resistance, and radical hope. These are poems that witness. That call out the silence. That pull you into a dark theater and demand you see what’s really playing on the screen.
Shea’s voice is a mix of velvet and grit—lyrical enough to lull, sharp enough to cut. This isn’t poetry to be quietly admired. It’s poetry that wakes you up.
Cathryn Shea is no stranger to powerful storytelling. Her previous works, including Genealogy Lesson for the Laity, Backpack Full of Leaves, and The Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree, have earned her a place in the literary world as a poet who weaves the personal and political with quiet force and clarity. With GHOST MATINEE, she sharpens her lens and swings harder.
In honor of National Poetry Month and Unsolicited Press’s Year of Womxn, this collection stands as a lyrical revolt—an offering to those who refuse to be erased, silenced, or forgotten.
BOOK DETAILS
Title: Ghost Matinee
Author: Cathryn Shea
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
ISBN: 978-1-963115-33-8
Publication Date: April 22, 2025
Genre: Poetry
Available: www.unsolicitedpress.com, Bookshop.org, Amazon, and wherever poetry dares to live.
About the Author
Cathryn Shea is the author of multiple chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, published in numerous journals and anthologies, and honored with awards judged by luminaries such as Charles Simic. She’s here to stir things up—and she’s just getting started.
For review copies, interviews, or event requests, contact:
📧 contact@unsolicitedpress.com
#GhostMatinee #YearOfWomxn #UnsolicitedPress #NationalPoetryMonth #Womxn #PoetryAsResistance #FeministPoetry #IndieLit
