Videlock, Wendy: Desert Kin

Lithic Press, paperback

Publication Date: September 1, 2026

Publisher Marketing: 

Wendy Videlock's latest collection of poems and essays.

Wendy Videlock’s rhythm and rhymes are fresh as a desert dawn. She writes from the edge of the Colorado Plateau, where the animals speak to her, “not with words, but with presence” and we feel them on every page as they embody fear, grief, recovery, vulnerability, and joy. These poems and essays remind us that a kinship with the land help us become more wholly alive. The Southwest courses through this book—and in Videlock’s veins—like a river in a canyon, like blood. —Brian Palmer, author of Living in the Now and Then

Feathered, scaly, bristled, dusty and soft, Wendy Videlock becomes the place she writes about. She is also the cat inside the fox, the lightness of the moth, the heart of the horse. Come fly and trot and sniff and dig around with her in “Desert Kin.”— no time with these beautiful words will be wasted. — Craig Childs, author of The Wild Dark, recipient of the John Burroughs Medal

Wendy Videlock lives on the edge of a mesa in Western Colorado. Her work appears widely, most notably in Dark Horse, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and Oprah Magazine. Her syndicated newspaper column, Word From the West appears in newspapers and magazines across the four corner states. Previous books include, The Poetic Imaginarium: A Worthy Difficulty, 2022 (Lithic) and from Able Muse Press, Wise to the West (2022), Slingshots and Love Plums (2015), The Dark Gnu and Other Poems (2013), and Nevertheless (2011).