Melanie Page of Grab the Lapels praises the Fat Poets Speak series in her review of Fat Poets Speak: Voices of the Fat Poets' Society, Fat Poets Speak 2: Living and Loving Fatly, and Fat Poets Speak 3: FatDance Flying. Read her review here.
"Really, the glory of reading this collection is that it's unique -- the poets' feelings about their fat bodies are typically silenced in media," she writes.
She adds, "This collection pushed me significantly. Though I've been reading about fat women for years now (all part of my quest), the love of fat bodies was surprising. Some part of me has accepted tolerance, rather than love. Can you love a fat body -- including your own? The answer is duh, yes, but because the message is so rarely distributed, I was shocked before I could normalize what I was reading."
The Fat Poets Speak series is edited by Frannie Zellman, who also contributes poems to the anthologies. The Fat Poets' Society was founded in 2006 at a National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) conference. The first volume contains poems by Kathy Barron, Anne S. Kaplan, Corinna Makris, Lesleigh Owen, and Zellman; the second, poems by Barron, Durette Hauser, Kaplan, Deb Lemire, Owen, Eileen Rosensteel, Dr. Deah Schwartz, M.M. Stine, Mary Ray Worley, and Zellman; and the third, poems by Barron, Tolonda Henderson, Hauser, Dawn Howard, Miranda Jacobson, Sherrie Myers, Kris Owen, Lesleigh Owen, Michelle Kriz Parkinson, and Zellman.
The Fat Poets Speak books are available in trade paperback and ebook from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Google Play, Apple Books, and other online retailers, as well as directly from Pearlsong Press.