[09/01/26] Speace, Amy: The Cardinals

Red Hen Press, paperback

Publication Date: September 1, 2026

Publisher Marketing:

"Amy Speace is an accomplished singer-songwriter, so she knows how to tell a story, how to make the listener care, and how to create something beautiful and meaningful that will live inside a person for years to come."--Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod

Amy Speace's debut collection of poetry, The Cardinals, is a lyrical investigation of marriage, divorce, mothering, and mysticism told through poems that read like intimate conversations but evoke the complexities of love and loss through the natural world.

An award-winning songwriter, championed early by Judy Collins (who has recorded her songs), she is an established presence in the Nashville songwriting scene and has been playing concerts throughout the world for the last twenty years. Her songs have always been celebrated for their poetic lyrics, and during Covid and a break in her touring career, Speace received her MFA in poetry from Spalding University. She was mentored by Maggie Smith and clearly comes from the lineage of Smith and Sharon Olds. Speace tackles the internal language of coming together and splitting apart, evoking rivers and birds, the South and the North, weather and racism and family history and it all comes together like birdsong.