Come join us here at Deep Vellum Books on October 7th, 2025 at 7pm for Katharine Coldiron and the launch of her new poetry collection, Out There in the Dark, alongside fellow poet, Mike Nagel!

Katharine Coldiron sees her life through a film projector. She watches The Sound of Music and observes that time is peculiarly preserved in a narrative film; she watches Singin' in the Rain and finds truth and falsehood layered in it like dental veneers; she watches Apocalypse Now and thinks about her father, and a certain Pulitzer-winning photograph of an American POW. Out There in the Dark is a dynamic collection of essays that blends film criticism with memoir and fiction, as well as lists, visual diagrams, and Wikipedia collaging. It plumbs deeply some of our most knotted, abstract concepts: truth, kindness, the West, the female body, war, and—inevitably—Hollywood.

Katharine Coldiron is the author of Ceremonials, Junk Film, and Wire Mothers. Her work as a book critic has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, theTimes Literary Supplement, and many other places; as an essayist, in Conjunctions, Ms., Booth, and elsewhere. She and her books have been profiled in three countries on radio and television. Find her at kcoldiron.com.

Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex, Culdesac (Autofocus Books, 2024). His essays have appeared in apt, Hobart, Split Lip, Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere around the internet. He lives in Plano, Texas.