I was delighted when my colleague Roberta Beary emailed me to tell me the delightful news. The Touchstone Book Awards is sponsored by The Haiku Foundation under the direction of Jim Kacian, its founder. Unsealing Our Secrets is a collection of poems by women and a few men about sexual abuse. It was published on the coattails of the MeToo movement. I am proud of this accomplishment and for the people who were brave enough to share their experiences.

Unsealing Our Secrets is available on Kindle as well as paperback on Amazon. Poet Laureate of Maryland, Grace Cavalieri writes:

Some 47 poets, women and men, tell long-held secrets of sexual abuse.
The subject would be too much to bear had it not been formalized into
Japanese forms of haiku, tanka, senryu, halibun, and what
curator/editor Rotella says is a rare form, the “Cherita.”

Even so, it’s difficult reading and exactly…