Grownfolk Blues: a musical in poems by Jae Nichelle

★ Winner of the 2025 Joe W. Bratcher Prize

Grownfolk Blues: a musical in poems is a powerful cross-genre experiment by the inimitable poet, performer and screenwriter Jae Nichelle, blending narrative verse with musical theater in a dynamic score that transcends the traditional bounds of a poetry collection. Inspired by the queer Southern blues artists of the 1920s and 30s, the narrative follows a character named You, a queer Black woman who is frequently crushed beneath the weight of societal demands. You struggles against the pains of coming into adulthood, of finding love and meaning in life. 

Publishing a century after the peak of popularity of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and the other queer, Black artists who inspired this work, Grownfolk Blues tackles the persistently relevant themes of those musical greats—balancing and thwarting trivial societal expectations, struggling to make a living, finding moments of levity in times of great pain. Playful yet deadly serious as it sings, backsteps, and levitates with the sonic power and the poignant rhythm of the blues, this collection transgresses genre. Familiar narratives around love and heartbreak are transformed by Nichelle’s deft  formal invention.

Grownfolk Blues contributes to an ongoing dialogue on the power of creative expression in challenging oppressive systems, providing readers with room to reflect on their own ability to resist seemingly immovable constraints. Highlighting beautifully the difficulty of what we must endure, Nichelle offers one woman’s journey toward finding love and acceptance, in dazzling librettos that dance and reach toward us across the page. 

* Signed pre-orders will ship by October 13th, 2026 *

Harmonious and discordant, melodious and mischievous, Jae Nichelle’s Grownfolk Blues carries the quintessential qualities of a successful sophomore poetry collection: the earned confidence of voice and sound, the surreal wizardry of form, the youthful willingness to play, and the beautiful and thrilling subversion of our expectations at every turn. — m. mick powell, author of DEAD GIRL CAMEO

When you pick up this book, know that in your hands you hold a performance waiting to bum-rush the stage in your mind. A formal wonder pulsing with all the humor and pain you want from the blues, all the drama and wit you want from a play, and all the transformative language you need from poetry. Jae Nichelle is one of the most playful and courageous poets writing today, her work filled with wonder, truth, and throbbing with real, kinetic force. This book is no static thing. It wants you to get up and groove, it wants you to give in and weep, it wants to sing you the blues and wants you to sing yours too. A phenomenal collection from the phenom herself. — Danez Smith, author of Bluff: Poems 

Grownfolk Blues is a poetic melody (you) can’t help but bounce your knees to. A treble clef meditation right-justified into a lesbian blues song magic’d purple. Royal and laying there in several dimensions ready for us to behold. In what world can a black lesbian be her own narrator & song? In what world does she invoice the nation & owe herself the debt? Grownfolk Blues. — Anastacia-Reneé, author of Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere

Louisiana-born Jae Nichelle (she/her) is a poet, performer, screenwriter, and the author of God Themselves (Andrews McMeel, 2023) and the chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary) (YesYes Books, 2019). A 2026 Oregon Literary Fellow and a graduate fellow of The Watering Hole, Jae was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and won the inaugural John Lewis Writing Award in poetry from the Georgia Writers Association. Her work has been featured by Write About Now and Button Poetry. She believes in all of our collective ability to contribute to radical change.

✦ Select Online Publications ✦

✦ The Offing Mag "Is Woken Up At 6am on Saturday Because I ‘Left All Them Damn Dishes In The Sink’” and “The Poem In Which We All Go Back to Where We Came From”

✦ The Georgia Review, “Grownfolk Blues”

✦ Frontier Poetry Magazine "Golden Shovel: After Lucille Clifton”

✦ANMLY “Grownfolk Talk” and “You is a child again”

144 pages
ISBN 978-1-972756-00-3
LCCN 2026938836 
Distributor Product Page