Rio Cortez’s forthcoming debut poetry collection GOLDEN AX received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. The reviewer praises: “Cortez maps untrodden historical and speculative terrain in poems of stunning breadth and intimacy in this exquisite debut…Unflinching and generous, this bold collection opens new vistas in contemporary Black poetry.” The collection also received a stunning blurb from AIN'T BURNED ALL THE BRIGHT author Jason Reynolds, which reads: “GOLDEN AX is a mirror maze where every poem elongates or widens the reader. Though Cortez leads us through a personal journey that embodies the distortion of the archived and the imagined, I couldn't help but feel at the end of it that I'd been in congress with some of my own lesser-recognized selves. I've never read anything like it. Truly a sublime experience.” Penguin Books will publish GOLDEN AX on August 30, 2022.