With desperate longing and raw vulnerability—but also surprising humor—Molly Johnsen’s debut collection confronts trauma and disability like long-lost relatives. Johnsen relies on the power and shortcomings of language to highlight the ways “we are manhandled by mortality.” From a therapist’s office, to a cave in Italy, to the raspberry patch in her childhood backyard, the borders of the material world switch from roadblocks to entryways and back. Johnsen’s work is grounded in precise imagery and keen observation, with cycles of family, trauma, and language at its heart. The reader is literally invited in as Johnsen shifts from begging her brain and body for mercy to forcefully reclaiming her selfhood.
Advance Praise for Everything Alive
“‘I’m an emergency,’” announces a poem in Molly Johnsen’s smart, chilling, and tender collection Everything Alive. These poems invite us into hospitals and tunnels, into school rooms and domestic spaces, exploring trauma, time, and the often fragile links between body and self. Johnsen’s writing is wrenching, clever, and dryly wise, investigating which wounds can be healed and which will endure, in a world where ‘it’s just hard to figure out what’s dead and why.’”
— Natalie Shapero, author of Stay Dead
“Molly Johnsen has accomplished what I feel is a fairly rare and difficult thing: to write a really, really good book of poems. Clear-sighted and moving, the poems that comprise Everything Alive arrive at discoveries and insights that are often startling, surprising, and honest: they bear the thorn of something seen with clarity and rendered honestly—of truth. The book to me is about, in part, our fundamental aloneness. And in poems that acknowledge that fact but embody a constant reaching toward the world and other people, they help us feel less alone.”
—Grady Chambers, author of North American Stadiums and Great Disasters
“The body’s fragility, and its surprising strength, are at the core of Molly Johnsen’s Everything Alive. Johnsen’s clear-eyed perspective on life and death manifests in her speaker’s willingness to be vulnerable. As she states in “Love, Me,” ‘curve a C around me./Come here. Like this./Make of us a nest, Love./Show me my body’s not/empty,’ Johnsen is unafraid to ask for what she needs to sustain her. Relationships, filial and romantic, tentative and enduring, are at the core of this brave book whose poems run the gamut of what is required to endure. Trauma may be the catalyst for much of what exists in these pages, but resilience and hope are what resonate.”
—Christopher Kennedy, author of Clues from the Animal Kingdom
and Isabella Gardner Poetry Award winner Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death
“Both ode and elegy, Molly Johnsen’s Everything Alive is one of the most moving, bittersweet portraits of living I’ve read in a long time. An expansive epistolary mode and direct address turn these poems toward ‘everything alive’ in the speaker’s world: family, beloveds, even the epilepsy that resurfaces after a traumatic accident. Every letter is a love letter, and this book regards our precarious world head-on with fierce, rigorous love. Look here, the details in these poems insist on singing: there’s life yet. I love this book.”
—Margaret Ray, author of Good Grief, the Ground
Media & Reviews
Molly Johnsen’s debut book, Everything Alive, is a poignant reflection of love, grief, and the fragility of life. Written after a devastating car accident, Johnsen’s poems urge the reader to accompany her as she reels from physical, mental, and emotional impacts and tries to adjust to her drastically shifted world. Although her poems center on painful topics, the book strikes a balance between Johnsen’s grief over what she lost and her love of those who remain.
Also Hit by a Truck w/ Molly Johnsen The Small Bow podcast, 9/10/25
Or find it on Spotify, Apple, etc.
“You Have to Do This”
An essay by Molly Johnsen about the process of writing Everything Alive also appeared in The Small Bow online —
“How to Survive” — The Small Bow Poet Laureate Series
(Link to essay)
“Today’s poem begins with a beautiful story that the speaker’s father would tell her, and transforms as she becomes the family storyteller. Stories themselves are like seeds in our lives; so much can grow from them. There is so much potential waiting inside.”
—Maggie Smith, The Slowdown
(Listen to the Episode here)
About the Author
Molly Johnsen is a Vermont-based writer and teacher. Her work has appeared in the Nashville Review, Indiana Review, Cider Press Review,The Slowdown, and others. A previous version of Everything Alive was selected as a semi-finalist for the Black Lawrence Press St. Lawrence Book Award. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University.
Author photo by Lee Bilsky
About the Artist
Leigh Viner
I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, where I still reside, but I dream of locating to the south of France. I’ve been creating and expressing myself through art as far back as I can remember. I began selling my art in 2003 and have been a full-time artist for almost twenty years. A partial list of my clients includes Marks and Spencer UK, Lady Gaga, Blushington, L’Oréal Paris, Max Factor and Pat McGrath, Bare Minerals, Gilt Group, Unicef Tap Water Project with Selena Gomez, Rhianna, Taylor Swift, Robin Williams, and Adrien Grenier. GlossyBox, Natalie Walker and Jouer. I’ve had my art exhibited internationally in Mayfair, London, and across the United States. My art has been featured on the big screen in “The Roommate” with Leighton Meester and Minka Kelly, in Times Square for Unicef, and on TV shows in the US, UK, and Canada. Some press features include; Elle Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, NY Magazine – The Cut, Rachel Zoe, Lonny Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Style at Home Magazine Canada, and Glamour Magazine. It is all due to your support of buying my art and spreading the word about my work, and for that, I am forever grateful.
SPECS
Everything Alive
Poetry
Paperback Original
Trim Size: 6 x 8
Page Count: 88
Price: $16.95 (CA $22.95)
ISBN: 979-8-9914134-6-6
Publication Date: OCTOBER 14, 2025
Distributor: IPG/Chicago, Ingram, and other wholesellers.
Rights sold: All rights available.
Rights: Dede Cummings, dede@greenwriterspress.com
Distributor: IPG; also available through Follett/Baker & Taylor, Ingram, and other wholesalers.
Individuals can pre-order directly from Bookshop.org, or contact your local, independent bookstore.
Booksellers, libraries, colleges/universities, gift shops, etc., can order through IPG:
Independent Publishers Group
814 N. Franklin Street
Chicago, IL 60610
Order Placement: (800) 888-4741
To request an advance reader copy—digital or print—email dede@greenwriterspress.com