Anne Marie Wells is the author of Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems (Curious Corvid Publishing, 2023), the inaugural winner of the Wanderlust Travel Book Award for her memoir, Happy Iceland, through Wild Dog Press, and the 2023 winner of the Cinnamon Press Chapbook Contest for her collection, Mother Comma Verb. She won the 2023 Maryland Writers Association Poetry Contest, the 2023 Jackson Hole Poetry Box Contest, 2023 DC Public Library Haiku Contest, was long-listed for the International Erbacce Prize in Poetry, and was short-listed for the inaugural Emma Howell Rising Poet Award. She was the winner of the 2021 Crow House Press Poetry Competition, earned the 2021 Peter K. Hixson Memorial award in poetry presented by Writer’s Relief, and was a 2021 Wyoming Woman of Influence nominee in the arts category for amplifying the voices of the LGBTQ and disabled communities through her writing. She received the 2020 Milestone Award presented by Wyoming Writers, Inc., and the 2020 Rising Star Award presented by the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce. She is the lead faculty for the DC Chapter of the Community Literature Initiative poetry publishing program through the Sims Library of Poetry and strategic partnership fellow for The Poetry Lab.

SURVIVED BY, began after Anne Marie learned of her father’s terminal cancer diagnosis. On December 13, 2019, after her father collapsed, too weak to even hold an ice chip in his mouth, she found herself writing poetry after having never written poetry before. When she felt the most lost and the most desperate, her instinct urged her to borrow a pen from the nurse’s station and write poems on the back of receipts she found in her purse.

Poems in this collection vary in form, creating a visually interesting collection that will make readers curious to turn to the next page. Her book explicitly invites readers to rip pages out, draw on them, and even write their own words on them.

SURVIVED BY, will appeal to individuals working through a grief journey and individuals who have experienced and are working through emotional hardships. This memoir in verse and selected other poems were born from the pain induced by watching her father slowly lose his life. Writing these poems kept her from drowning in her grief, and she hopes that others can find a similarly buoyant companion in this collection and use her words in whatever ways they need in order to stay afloat too.

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