The GW University Writing Program is pleased to announce that Professor Danika Myers's poetry collection from Finishing Line Press, Her Names, Her Wits, will be published May 8, 2026, and is available for preorder NOW at a discounted rate. The poems were written over several years of walking and running in cemeteries, reading names on gravestones.
“Myers stitches a portrait of family animated by her young daughter’s fascination with cemeteries—places to play with interesting names. In gorgeous lyric moments, Myers renders these plots of land as patches of earth that—like patches on clothing, like families—attempt to hold the evanescent lives of humans, an endeavor that is at once “the substance of a life” and must fail: “things that wear / away laid over things / that wear away.” A chorus of names from gravestones threads through this work, evoking in song the mystery of what it means to be a self, to be called something on earth.”
–Allison Cobb, author of Green-Wood and Plastic: an Autobiography
“As a child runs eagerly amongst headstones, so a poet is gifted songs from inside the carved names. With a sensibility reminiscent of Lorine Niedecker, Emily Dickinson, and Susan Howe, Danika Myers teases song from story. Reading Her Names, Her Wits allowed me to experience the powerful distance and proximity that poetry can simultaneously afford. Here, surely, is a debut to read again and again.”
–Sally Keith, author of Two of Everything and River House
If you’re interested in hearing about readings and events related to Her Names, Her Wits, and about future publication, you can also sign up for Professor Myers mailing list.