About the Author

Jennifer Lewis is the editor of Red Light Lit. Her short story, "The New Low," was the winner of Nomadic Press Bindle Award, forthcoming this fall of 2018. In June 2017, she was the 1st runner-up for the Los Angeles Review Creative Non-Fiction Award for "Holy Communion." Her fiction has been published in in Cosmonaut's Avenue, Eleven Eleven, Fourteen Hills Press, and Midnight Breakfast. She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in May 2015 and was the recipient of the Leo Litwak award for creative non-fiction in 2012 and for fiction in 2015. Jessie Carver is an editor and writer who lives in Portland, Oregon, but grew up on a farm in the borderlands of New Mexico. She has edited many books and magazines, including Bitch magazine (2010 to the present); What About the Rest of Your Life by Sung Yim (2018 Lambda Literary Award finalist); The End of My Career by Martha Grover (2016 Oregon Book Awards finalist); and Life Begins at Incorporation by Pulitzer Prize finalist Matt Bors. Jessie is the former manager of poetry acquisitions at Ooligan Press and a former poetry acquisitions editor at Blue Mesa Review. When she's not editing and writing for other people, Jessie is busy with her own writing (her fiction can be found in Entropy and Watershed Review, and she co-authored the 2011 book Rethinking Paper & Ink: The Sustainable Publishing Revolution) and as an adjunct professor of writing and editing at Portland State University.

Reviews

"Love Is the Drug is so shimmering and personal. These little moments when we achieve, with the aid of another, some kind of sublime, and time and space sort of dissolve and we're right where it feels we're meant to live--those little moments are quick sparkles, these efforts to pin them down in poetry feel as sweaty and muscular, as desperate and full of passion, as the sex itself. Each one a little flare, a little death, an I was here." --Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir and Black Wave"Love Is the Drug & Other Dark Poems is infinitely readable. Next time you need to be consoled or need to be reminded that you're not the only one having troubles with love, I recommend spending a few hours with this slim, many-voiced collection of poetry. It will cure whatever ails you. If I were a doctor, I'd tell you to take two and call me in the morning." --Carl Adamshick, author of Saint Friend"Reader beware: These audacious, daring, often heartbreaking poems will shove love, with all its messy, unwieldy glory, in your face. Featuring the work of 33 poets and 8 artists, this astonishing collection explores the underbelly of love from remarkably divergent perspectives. Yet each poet in some way posits the question: How can love survive in today's world, with its high expectations and infinite distractions? These poems, and the edgy art that accompanies them, go a long way toward answering that question." --Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of Junkie Wife"Poetry is my first love, and with this spectacular collection, I am reminded why. The aliveness I felt as I read each complex and unique piece in this book had me shaking my fist at the sky with knowing, had me tearing up, had me excited, had me heartbroken, had me undone. This book is the drug, this book is the love, this book is life." --Jennifer Pastiloff, author of On Being Human"Love, in fact, is a drug--a cocktail really, of noradrenaline, oxytocin, dopamine. In love, we are on drugs, and out of love we crave the next hit. Maybe that's why there's so much sugar in these pages, sweets and syrups employed as metaphor for what the Beloved withholds, the drug to set the lover free. Reader, prick up your ears! A choir of unruly, ardent, and embodied poems is singing." --Lisa Wells, author of The Fix"Within this book lives the profound work of pain turned into poetry, and that poetry, into power. These poems hold the best, most beautiful, brutal, sharp, and tender words of these wise and generous writers. My gratitude for their brilliance and generosity is endless. Elixir and companion, keep this book close. Let it leave your side only so that it may be shared with others." --Reema Zaman, author of I Am Yours