Marj Ostani
The Thing About Eating Alone - Preorder - Ships October 2026
The Thing About Eating Alone - Preorder - Ships October 2026
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$30.00 USD
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This book is a preorder and will ship in October 2026. Preorders close September 26, 2026.
Marj Ostani’s The Thing About Eating Alone—in direct conversation with her debut, Homecoming—is a poetry collection that interrogates the architectures of home, intimacy, and survival. Whereas the first book lingered in warmth, safety, and shared tables, this collection enters the quieter rooms of neglect, emotional hunger, repetition, and the long aftermath of loneliness that arrives when survival is no longer enough.
Meals, rooms, hands, and silences recur as motifs, forming a lexicon, and sites where hunger accumulates. The poems trace a childhood marked by emotional absence, to adult relationships shaped by confusion and unavailability; from the reckoning with violence and abuse, to the isolating work of leaving and starting over; and finally, toward a fragile but honest seeing.
The Thing About Eating Alone confronts neglect, violence, and shame without flinching, even while turning towards self-kindness, surrender, and the first intimations of faith. It is a work that examines hunger in all its forms: for safety, for belonging, for something to hold onto when the table is empty—and you are learning, for the first time, how to feed yourself.
AUTHOR BIO: Marj Ostani is a Filipino writer, editor, mentor, and the founder of Poetry Salon. She is the author of Homecoming (2023) and The Thing About Eating Alone (2026). Her work has appeared in literary anthologies including Rosa Redux: Women from Southeast Asia (2026) and The Central Avenue Poetry Prize (2024), and she has edited poetry collections by emerging local and international writers. Beyond her own writing, Ostani mentors emerging writers, facilitates creative writing workshops, and builds literary spaces that champion storytelling and artistic community. She lives in Manila, Philippines.
