By Erin Wood
Randi M. Romo (“Romo”) has been creating literary community in Central Arkansas for decades, not only by sharing her own brave, explosive, luxuriously challenging poems, but by encouraging others to take up the pen and take the mic to share their own toughest stories.
Now, Randi’s words are more accessible to all through her courageous first book, Othered, a full-length poetry collection released in fall 2018 that was recently featured in the 2019 Arkansas Literary Festival. Othered was selected by the American Library Association as a top-five book in poetry/fiction for 2018 and a top-ten book of 2018 overall in its annual Over the Rainbow list of Recommended LGBTQ Reading. An incredible feat for any author, and even more so when one learns Romo is a self-taught writer with a sixth-grade education.
As a Mexican-American, Southerner, former farmworker, organizer/activist, queer, female, parent, grandparent, working class, elder, and survivor, Romo has walked among and between many communities, and her voice reaches into who we are as humans.
A 5.83” x 8.27” paperback with 96 pages, Othered is available at siblingrivalrypress.com and through local and national booksellers.
A Hot Springs native, Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs Et Alia Press (etaliapress.com). Wood is author of Women Make Arkansas: Conversations With 50 Creatives (April, 2019) and editor of and a contributor to Scars: An Anthology (2015).
