Content Warning— I Pull the Trigger
Summer Reading Wrecks
It’s an actual reader experience and a poetry book that is unlike any other. Each page is unique. 144 pages of poetry and art alone. An experiment in layout and typography reflecting the subject matter of the poems. A fully themed book from cover to cover. An exercise in fears and the irrational mind. Designed to bring your skeletons and baggage out and force you to confront things you really want to avoid. A collectible collection of dark speculative poems presented in an unnerving way. A poetry book for therapist waiting rooms, hospital dayroom coffee tables and stuffed under quiet room mattresses.
It also feeds a poet. Feeding poets is the only comfort I hope you get from the experience and for which I am eternally grateful. If you throw the book across room, break your Kindle or tap out, I’m thrilled.
“If David Bowie, William Burroughs, and Dorothy Parker took some mighty powerful hallucinogens, it’s Pixie Bruner they would concoct into being through the greatest incantations—poetry. Pixie flays truths into a danse macabre, and then choreographs new works from those bones. Bones we all try to hide, but are within, nonetheless. “
— Colleen Anderson, Rhysling Award and SFPA Dwarf contest winner, and multiple nominee
The newest poetry collection from Bruner, Poems to be Afraid Of joined the Authortunities Press catalog as part of the press’s continued commitment to publishing bold, distinctive voices and work that resonates beyond the strange pages.
“Authortunities Press is honored to bring Pixie Bruner’s Poems to be Afraid Of to readers,” said Angela Yuriko Smith, publisher of Authortunities Press. “This collection reflects the kind of courageous, memorable work we are proud to champion”.
Pixie Bruner’s Poems to be Afraid Of is a dark speculative poetry collection built around fear: phobias, irrational thoughts, death, psychological horror, discomfort, confession, and the strange private terrors we carry around in ordinary daylight.
Bruner describes the book as an experimentin fear, written in a four-week, spite-driven frenzy, with imposter syndrome summoned not as an obstacle but as raw material.
This is not a collection that wants to sit politely on the shelf. It wants to unsettle. It wants to transgress. The book has been conceived as an object as much as a text: pocket-sized, narrow, and strange, like a religious tract or a travel guide for surviving your own anxieties.
Its purpose is not simply to describe fear, but to make the reader encounter it in unexpected places: in the body, in the mirror, in memory, in objects that should be harmless but suddenly are not.
Bruner, author of the two-time Elgin Award-nominated debut collection The Body As Haunted, brings a voice already familiar to readers of dark, weird, and speculative poetry. Her work has appeared in publications including Space & Time, Spectral Realms, and Strange Horizons, and Poems to be Afraid Of continues her interest in the body, the uncanny, and the places where survival and haunting become impossible to separate.
What makes this collection compelling is its refusal to treat fear as something simple. Fear is a warning, but it can also be a gift, a distortion, a dare, a wound, a joke with teeth. In Bruner’s hands, terror becomes intimate and inventive, less a haunted house than a haunted self.
Readers drawn to dark speculative poetry, psychological horror, feminist horror, weird confessionals, and books that make discomfort feel strangely electric should find plenty to be afraid of here. And thats exactly the point.
Intrepid readers can learn more here: https://authortunitiespress.com/b/poems-to-be-afraid-of
“Like a runaway cyber truck, Pixie Bruner's Poems to be Afraid Of stalked and bore down on me on every page. The poems pummeled me; I could not escape until I'd been roughed up by every single one, to the last terrifying image. Well into the midnight hours, I was forced to keep reading. Not safe, not safe at all.”
— Mary Turzillo, Elgin and Nebula winner
"Irreverent wit, impeccable timing, and flawless verse. Pixie wrings laughter from every grimace and makes a feast of our worst fears."
— Lilith Raven Rose, author of Bittersweet Empathy
The phobia-hung pages of Pixie Bruner’s Poems to Be Afraid Of take us to places where “the things we fear make us monstrous”. Bruner has a deft touch, and a sympathetic one. With phobia after phobia—I’m talking buttons to germs (literally, the book opens and closes with those)—the trauma/dread of dealing with BIG FEARS is unpacked, unfolded and the reader is dared to face them. Shuddering between the profundities of lines like “life is lost so easily, a pair of keys in a junk drawer” to blood-red lines that go for the throat: “A sucking chest wound. Devil’s Food cake soaked in artificial food coloring or insect shell powder” this book is emotionally big, is raw, is screaming, is different and (absolutely most importantly)this book is authentic. Modern horrors presented as poetry. Don’t run from it, embrace it.”
— Juleigh Howard-Hobson – HWA, SFPA, Best New Weird Award Winner, 2025 SFPA Elgin Award Chair, multiple Rhysling nominee and author of the Elgin-Nominated Our Otherworld.
“As a poet laureate and speculative poet, I am always delighted to discover collections that embrace the darker corners of the imagination. In Poems to Be Afraid Of, Pixie Bruner invites readers into a world of visceral fears, where phobias surrounding motherhood, pixies, social rejection, insects, and many other anxieties take on vivid and unsettling forms. These poems draw upon the classic traditions of horror, exploring the uncanny, the monstrous, and the things that linger in the shadows long after we turn away. Yet beneath the chill lies a deeper truth about the fears we carry and the stories we tell ourselves about them. Bruner's poems are haunting, making this collection a rewarding read for anyone who loves horror poetry and dark speculative verse.
—Wendy Van Camp
Anaheim Poet Laureate Emerita (2022-2024)
SFWA Poetry Committee Chair
Editor, Writing Coach, and Author
What other surviving readers are saying about Poems to be Afraid Of:
"Pixie Bruner’s latest collection of poems leads your mind through a mirrored house of psychological horror. Each poem reflects something you might see in yourself. The unease they invoke ls real, not from invented conditions of the mind, but because they are real phobias that haunt mankind. Pixie's word choice captivates. Her brilliant way of mixing multiple sensory details is unque in ways I've never read before. Her poems resonate because they address fears you had hoped to forget, yet like an addict, savor until the point of becoming scared. Poems you'll be afraid of. So true. There is something for everyone who loves horror in this collection."
— Stephen Schwartz - SchwartzGames.com
“This book is an amazing trip through phobias with poetry and prose poetry. It explores phobias in a way never seen before. This isn't your average poetry book with remixes of words traipsing through the same topics. This is awe inspiring talent drawing you in and making you think about things you never thought of before this is poems to be afraid of. Pixie Bruner has spent decades honing her craft and it shows through in every line. Bringing forth nightmares in lyrical prose. Whether you laugh or cry is entirely up to you and your individual phobias but you’ll be glad for chance to see through the looking glass either way. “
— Jordan Francis -The Mad Poets Street corner, author Sailing Dark Seas and Sword You Left Behind
Some knew better-
“I have an intense fear of phobias, but I'm sure under Pixies masterful hand, this collection will showcase an epic proportion of Disturbia”
— Laura Kester Duerrwaechter
Some pushed on—
“Pixie invites readers into a cabinet of fears both familiar and esoteric, transforming even the most obscure phobias into experiences that feel ominously real. Her vivid, immersive poetry lingers long after the final page, leaving readers to question whether any fear is truly irrational. Pixie’s Poems to Be Afraid Of is a haunting collection for the intrepid reader.”
— Jason O’Toole, author of The Strange Misgivings of the Sadly Gifted
“Pixie Bruner is a poet in a class all her own. She is a dream maker, powerfully moving, weaving myth, realities, humor and heartbreak into poetry and prose in her unique distinctive style. In this book, Poems to Be Afraid Of, she is a sorceress, leadingus through this legendary world of phobias. Her poems can go anywhere, from literary to fantasy, quiet observation to darkly playful. Some simple recollection of heartache. All told with the same sincerity of the soul. The poems are accompanied by Chroma catalogue poems which add a surprising twist. This book is truly a one of a kind. And it delves into a subject we are all fascinated by, phobias.”
— Sara Castaneda, Author, Underdog Bet
About the Author: Pixie Bruner (Dread Writers Society/SFPA) is a writer and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta Georgia with her doppelgänger and deranged cats. She has weird things published many fine places in multiple universes through Space & Time, from Spectral Realms to Strange Horizons. Her 2x-Elgin nominated debut was The Body As Haunted and there are Poems to be Afraid Of (July 22, 2026), both on Authortunities Press
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