Now available from Tarpualin Sky Press
In 2013, Lauren acquired a copy of her great-great-grandfather’s diary. Robert Wallace Hubert was a Captain in Hood’s Texas Brigade in the Confederate army. After his return from the Civil War, he fathered twenty children by three of his former slaves, who were also sisters. One of those children was the poet’s great-grandmother.
As she transcribed the 225-page diary, Lauren became interested in its omissions and determined to write into the space of what is missing. The result is Descent, a book-length reckoning with this part of her family’s history.
Lauren Russell is a poet and writer in hybrid forms. She is the author of Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020) and What’s Hanging on the Hush (Ahsahta Press, 2017). She is an assistant professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University and is Director of the RCAH Center for Poetry.
