The Blue Years
A lyrical essay collection by Erin Rose Belair
OUT NOW!
“I hope this collection offers moments and reminders that we never truly ache alone, that there is mystery in the mundane, and that life is both stunning and tragic, often in the same instance.”
—Erin Rose Blacque Belair
The Blue Years is a lyrical essay collection, written by Erin Rose Belair; a story told through prose, poetry, love notes, meticulous research, and meditations on the sea. Written at a beach house, at the very edge of California, over a two-year period. This collection grapples with grief, love, isolation, motherhood, and what we owe to ourselves in this life. It is a balm to any broken heart and a beacon for weathering any storm.
PRAISE FOR THE BLUE YEARS
“The Blue Years gripped and held me, like the ocean itself, with its ferocity and its rhythms. Erin Rose Belair is attuned to the textures and attachments of ordinary days: quick blooms of rust, sand on bare feet, a crate of peaches crying out to be eaten before they rot, so no sweetness will be wasted in this life. But these daily textures are also the language with which this book pronounces its vast, unanswerable questions: Why do we leave? How do we stay? What compels us toward open spaces and what do we do in them? I was immediately immersed in the world of this book, hypnotized by its rhythms, and utterly moved by how it thinks with its heart.”
—Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and Make it Scream, Make it Burn.
“With lyrical and ebbing prose, these reflections are so fierce—they gleam. Each piece, polished, glowing seaglass. Erin Rose Belair is an author who is unafraid to wade into the depths. The Blue Years dazzles.”
—Joy Sullivan, author of Instructions for Traveling West
Erin Rose Belair
A writer, from the coffee to the grave. Less of a vocation and more of a veneration. Erin Rose is a multi-genre writer exploring the boundaries of her craft. She received her MFA in fiction where she wrote, Vinegar, her first collection of short stories. Stories from this collection have been published in Greensboro Review, Juked, Green Hills, Southern Indiana Review, and have won awards with Glimmer Train and Narrative.
She is currently editing her first novel, CULLING, and is busy raising her son and hosting international writing retreats with her company Trust and Travel. You can follow along at @roseblacque.