Poet Lore and The Writer’s Center present a FREE virtual chat about the craft of poetry! We’re joined by Arielle Hebert to discuss her debut poetry collection, Bottom Feeders. Arielle is in conversation with Emily Holland, poet and editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal.

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Arielle Hebert is a queer poet based in North Carolina with roots in Florida and Louisiana. Her debut poetry collection, Bottom Feeders, was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in June 2026. She holds an MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and have appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Poetry Daily, Best New Poets, Grist, Great River Review, Nimrod, and Redivider, among others. Arielle believes in ghosts and magic.

About Bottom Feeders

A vibrant and gritty debut from poet Arielle Hebert, Bottom Feeders is a queer coming-of-age collection set in late 2000s Florida, during the height of the opioid epidemic. Here, overdoses, red tide blooms, and hurricanes are as much a part of growing up as fleeting teenage desires, beach parties, and prom.

This is a landscape of glitter and grime, where young queer love is tested by the tides of addiction and recovery. The collection thrums with a sense of spectacle and surreality, accented by Sarasota’s history as a circus town and Florida’s deadly wildlife—alligators, needlefish, invasive snakes. The heat, humidity, and salt air of the Gulf become characters in their own right, as haunting as the love, grief, and loss found here. Despite the long shadows cast over these poems, there is beauty, friendship, chosen family, and hope in Bottom Feeders.

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