Surfacing, Emily Brouwer Tuszynska’s first collection of poetry, chronicles the fleeting moments of motherhood in all their wonder, exhaustion, and transcendent joy. In the pages of the book, the faces of two boys come swimming up from a block of marble beneath the hands of a 15th century sculptor, the world seems to spring into being as a young couple descends from an icy mountain into a lush green valley, and a family grows, child by child by child.

With a clear-eyed, fierce attention, the poems in Emily Tuszynska’s debut collection SURFACING, winner of the Grayson Books Poetry Award (Grayson Books, January 2024) chronicle the fleeting moments of early motherhood in all its exhaustion, tenderness, and transcendent wonder. In the book’s pages, the faces of two boys come swimming up from a block of marble beneath the hands of a 15th century sculptor, the world seems to spring into being as a young couple descends from an icy mountain into a lush green valley, and a family grows, child by child by child, in a small suburban house on the edge of the natural world. Attuned to both the brevity of existence and life’s insistent pulse, the subtly crafted poems invite the reader to excavate the mystery that it is to be alive together on this planet and find the extraordinary within even our most ordinary days.

Emily Tuszynska’s poetry has appeared in EcoTheo Review, The Georgia Review, Mom Egg Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and many other publications. Her poems have received numerous recognitions, including a Pushcart Prize special mention, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, and PRISM International’s Earle Birney award. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in poetry from the Sewanee Writers Conference and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Parent Residency Fellowship from Mineral School, as well as fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation. In 2020 she served as the artist-in-residence at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness state park, and she currently teaches at George Mason University. Surfacing, winner of the Grayson Books Poetry Award, is her first collection of poetry.