Seventeen Poems Not About a Lover, by founder of Sadie Girl Press, Sarah Thursday, published by Arroyo Seco Press is a 38 page, perfect-bound chapbook. It includes paper-cut illustrations for each poem by Alyssandra Nighswonger. Available through Sadie Girl Press Bookstore and MADE by Millworks in Long Beach.

Seventeen Poems Not About a Lover is a collaboration between poet, Sarah Thursday, and artist, Alyssandra Nighswonger. After six years of friendship and artistic crushing, this dream project came to life. Though the poems intentionally avoid the topic of romantic love, they deal with love and loss from family and inner personal struggle. Each of the seventeen poems has a custom papercut illustration, hand-cut and photographed for a 3-D effect.

Alyssandra Nighswonger is a multi-media artist and adventure-lover from Long Beach, CA. This project was a swan dive into the heart and a journey in itself. The thing that Alyssandra admires the most about her friend Sarah is the way she takes her own personal challenges and creates an alchemy of the heart with her raw and fearlessly beautiful poetry. For Alyssandra, who can be a lot more timid with exposing the darker side of her emotions in her music and art and tends to hide meaning behind whimsy on the regular, this collaboration was a thematic challenge. It led to creating deeper layers in the illustrations, opening them up to being cut apart, and exposing that even the cutest wolf has a shadow, which developed this work into a papercut escapade. You can explore several of her musical projects and adventures at talesofalyssandra.com or follow her instagram @alyssssandra.