Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators

Publishing on June 23, 2026, from Lynx House Press.

Flowing along the subtropical waterways and rooted in the happenstance of our day-to-day experiences, award-winning poet Heather Sellers’ latest poetry collection, Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators, presents radiant portraits of the people — and creatures — that she encounters in her wonderfully weird home state of Florida.

Drawn from the author’s daily observation journals, the collection’s sun-struck, open-hearted poems eavesdrop on conversations among neighbors and follow the quirky behaviors of humans—and other interesting animals—throughout the course of a year in The Sunshine State. And as increasingly powerful hurricanes brew in the background, the reader experiences fresh compassion for the fragile lives carved out of a fragile landscape. In the end, Sellers assures us that paying close attention, noticing wildness in the ordinary, and ultimately, tending our connections to each other, is what will see us through.

“Heather Sellers' Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators is pure poetry magic and reinvention. Sellers' women are resilient and practical and clear-eyed even when the skies are not clear. These fearless women kayak, jump on backyard trampolines, carry pink elderly dogs, and even consider raising alligators (‘the babies are super cute’). Sellers' attention to her wonderfully strange surroundings makes her a pioneer of poetry.” — Denise Duhamel

“There’s a wonderful spontaneity in these poems, which allows us to overhear the thinking mind as it observes and comments on a world both damaged and beautiful. In sinuous, inventive poems, Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators takes us on a wild ride through a Florida alive with surprising detail—a dragonfly seen as ‘microwaved jewelry,’ or a small dog that ‘looks like a snack’ as it swims in alligator territory. The language is simultaneously unpredictable and exact, which is hard to do, and has about it the authority of experience and a very high quality of attention. Funny, but also tender, probing, and open-hearted, this is a book in which anything might happen and often does.” — Chase Twichell

“A chorus rising from the heart of the Florida suburbs, Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators shimmers with the wisdom and peril of the ordinary. Part gossip, part allegory, these intimate narratives explore a place where small talk gives way to simple truths, where conversations shift like houses built on swampland and disaster is just one hard rainfall away. Rendered with humor, fierce honesty and grace, these arresting poems lure us to the lush wilderness of Sellers’ own inimitable voice.” — Silvia Curbelo