Tenderness

First printing: 2,000 copies.

Derrick Austin is the winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Award. This is his second collection of poems.

Austin's previous collection, Trouble the Water (BOA, 2016), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and the Norma Faber First Book Award.

Tenderness has been selected as The Rumpus's Poetry Book Club selection for September 2021.

Austin is a Stegner Poetry Fellow at Stanford University and an M.F.A. graduate of the University of Michigan.

Austin's poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Best American Poetry 2015, Black Nerd Problems, Gulf Coast, Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion, The Nation, New England Review, Tin House, and Tupelo Quarterly.

Strong regional appeal in the South, with particular appeal in Florida and cities with large BIPOC LGBT communities.