One Hundred Hungers by Lauren Camp

Jake Vermaas speaks to poet Lauren Camp about her collection One Hundred Hungers.

In her new collection, Lauren Camp explores the lives of a first-generation Arab-American girl and her Jewish-Iraqi parent. One Hundred Hungers tells overlapping stories of food and ritual, immigration and adaptation, evoking Baghdad in the 1940s at a time when tensions began to emerge along ethnic and religious lines. She also draws upon memories of Sabbath dinners in America to reveal how family culture persists.

Lauren Camp is the author of three books, including One Hundred Hungers, which won the Dorset Prize. She has two upcoming poetry collections, Turquoise Door (3: A Taos Press, 2017) and Took House (Tupelo Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Split This Rock, Poetry International, Slice, Boston Review, Nashville Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Other literary honors include the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize, the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, prizes from RHINO and Western Humanities Review, and a Black Earth Institute Fellowship. She is a staff writer for Poets Reading the News and the producer/host of “Audio Saucepan” on Santa Fe Public Radio, a program that interweaves music with contemporary poetry. www.laurencamp.com