“Reading Seluja’s exquisite first collection feels like a sacred act of gathering. . . . This is an honest, heartbreaking homage to a brother lost to the world but held tenderly in the heart of his sister.”—Janet St. John, Booklist
“Gather the Night is a poetic love letter to Seluja’s brother Lou and to all schizophrenics. . . . These poems capture the wonder and grief of those who have loved the afflicted, witnessed their buzzing world, and endured their loss.”—Valerie Martínez, author of Each and Her
“Quietly powerful . . . Gather the Night ambitiously takes on the task of speaking about loss, addiction, madness, grief, and love, bringing us into its intimate confrontations. We emerge from reading it with a deeper understanding of all of the above, a sense of wonder at the way we get through the harder, harsher aspects of our lives, and an appreciation for poets and nurses like Seluja who guide the way.”—Donna Bulseco, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
“When you stop breathing while reading, you know you are there. . . . Gather the Night is a ‘rupture so much closer than it seems.’”—Meg Tuite, author of Bound by Blue: Stories
“Seluja has created a collection of poems that are both heartbreakingly beautiful and deliver the wrenching pain of a powerful kick to the reader’s gut.”—Phyllis M. Skoy, author of What Survives: A Novel
“Katherine DiBella Seluja’s poems stop us in our tracks—take us inside the suffering of the mentally ill and addicted, and testify to the toll on them and their families as they seek healing.”—Carole Simmons Oles, author of A Selected History of Her Heart: Poems