Paige Thomas: Person Under

The Literary Arts Bookstore is excited to welcome our colleague and friend Paige Thomas to celebrate her debut poetry collection, Person Under! Paige will be in conversation with her sister, Blair Thomas.

About the book:

“Paige Thomas’s stunning debut Person Under is a work of pure magic. In Thomas’s
talented hands, this impersonal, reductive guardianship document transforms into an
intimate, compassionate family portrait. And like many family portraits, it’s complicated: Thomas pairs language and image to offer us a remarkable, relatable collage of radiance and playfulness alongside concern and confusion. The book’s many layers—both textual and emotional—will magically reveal more to you on each read. There’s so much to admire in Person Under: it will challenge your assumptions, deepen your empathy, and jump-start your heart.”

 —Jennifer Richter, author of Dear Future

Person Under renders a careful portrait of two sisters and their mother. In this book-length erasure of guardianship renewal papers, Paige Thomas retrieves fragments of her family’s voices to depose a legal document’s authority. With each act of obstruction informed by interviews, original illustrations, and meticulously tracked collage materials, this debut visual poetry collection disrupts the finality of official language as three women transcend the pages that defined their lives.

Thomas’s work considers story-making that undermines antiquated systems of power, interrogates the necessity of community and familial care, and examines the intersection of art and disability.