Every Beautiful Pen Bleeds Through

OUT NOW [ November 8, 2024]

"In Every Beautiful Pen Bleeds Through, Contreras explores the many sides of love, from romantic to platonic, familial to self. She wields her pen with a fierce precision that carves her poems into extraordinary shapes and messages. Contreras is a poet gifted beyond her years with a voice that demands and deserves to be heard.”

— Amy Meyerson, Bestselling Author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays


From a young age, Shandela Contreras noticed how beautiful gel pens bled through the paper, leaving traces that seemed to mar their delicate canvas. Yet, as she grew, she came to embrace this bleeding as something beautiful—an inevitable mark of honesty and depth, that the pen is an extension of ourselves meant to hold space within each stage of our lives.

In this confessional collection of love poems, Shandela delves into the beauty and pain of love, the raw aftermath of heartbreak, and the delicate balance of self-discovery. Rooted in the confessional poetry tradition, she bares her most vulnerable thoughts, allowing readers to see her inner world as it truly is. Through each page, she opens up candidly, exploring her intimate relationships with others, their relationships with themselves, the world around, and, most profoundly, herself.

She knows our life is experimental so each poem begs you to revel in that.