“Joe Deany-Braun’s new collection, Young Santa, brings together saint and Santa in a way I could never have guessed at before reading this thin, quietly astonishing book. In a stanzaic form invented by the poet Jack Collom—a variant of Robert Kelly’s “lune” form—comprised of three/five/three-word tercets (and so bearing the distinct fragrance of Kamakura’s haiku), Deany-Braun upends our inherited sense of Santa as jolly giver of half-deserved joys. Far from the red-nosed, portly elder tipsy on his own generosity, Young Santa cuts the lean figure of an ascetic mystic, more Jain than djinn, closer to a stoic philosopher than to the stuff of our childhood dreams.” — Dan Beachy-Quick, The Los Angeles Review of Books

Photo by Cori Storb

Joe Deany-Braun is the curator of Perelandra Bookshop and author of Young Santa. His work has appeared in The Denver Post, The Colorado Sun, LitHub, Poets & Writers, and the Biennial of the Americas. He holds a BA in ecosystem science and an MFA in writing & poetics.