Books

Creative Nonfiction Chapbook

Available Now from CutBank Books

Praise for Edge of the Sea:

"In these sparse, crystalline, and often chilling essays, Allison Field Bell mines the territory of her own body and her mother's body as sites of passion, violence, power, secrets, control, and desire. Keep up, she demands of the reader, exploring intergenerational and cumulative incidents of trauma that pass in so many of our lives as commonplace and go unspoken, unearthing the volatile bonds between a mother and daughter and a girl/woman to her own physical truths amid this gorgeous and terrifying world. An incisive talent to watch."

—Gina Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down

“In these sharp and poetic essays, Field Bell explores the vulnerability of the body with raw honesty. She navigates childhood innocence, mother-daughter dynamics, and the complexities of desire and attraction against lush natural backdrops. Grappling with mental health and the quest for transformative experiences, Field Bell’s voice seeks to articulate the entanglements of shame and longing. These reflections on self-acceptance and the messiness of life invite readers into a profound dialogue about connection and disconnection. A necessary read for anyone in Gender and Sexuality Studies, Field Bell’s work resonates like a modern equivalent of Proust.”

—Puneet Dutt, Poetry Editor, The Fiddlehead and author of The Better Monsters

“Intimate and gripping, Allison Field Bell’s memoir-in-flash unfolds in present tense, through artful use of child’s and young woman’s POV. The themes in these small pieces are large—consent and culpability, rape and attempted rape, alcoholism and an eating disorder, coming out as bisexual, mothers and daughters, the nature of memory itself. Field Bell’s focus is always vivid and precise, her details beautifully chosen. Edge of the Sea is a stunning debut collection.”

 —Jacqueline Doyle, author of The Missing Girl

Poetry Chapbook

Available to Pre-Order Now from Finishing Line Press

Praise for Without Woman or Body:

“These unflinching poems communicate the physical, emotional and psychic toll of carving out a life as ‘this heavy thing they call woman’, a toll which dogs this speaker wherever she goes, from the Sonoran Desert (‘spikes           gone soft          in starlight’) to an Israeli kibbutz (‘the worst worry is animal’) to Barcelona (‘Here, you can/ speak. You can read signs, order a glass of wine. /Vino, por favor. You can ask for directions, tell/ men to fuck off.’)  Their honesty is searing and staggering.” 

—Jacqueline Osherow, author of Divine Ratios

“A poet's heart caught and tangled in a woman's body...Virginia Woolf, as she often does, gets it right. Allison Field Bell's remarkable chapbook is a lyric study of a woman and her body, though its title looks forward to a time when neither will be so important. These poems are entangled with the natural world, from the Negev's date trees to backyard tulips, snow in Indiana to cottonwoods anywhere in the American west. What else but our landscapes are suitable for illuminating not only a woman's body, but our embodiment. The wisest speaker has ‘legs as resilient as cacti/and you can plant them anywhere.’ Field Bell has planted these vivid and astonishing poems in my heart and body, too.” 

—Connie Voisine, author of Calle Florista

“From friendship to inebriation, from strings of lovers to lovers with strings, from the most florescent male guppy to the first tulip that breaks through the snow, Without Woman or Body is the branching of female desire. Winter is for dreaming, and come spring, these poems yearn themselves into buds, unfurling, green and hungry for the sun. Allison Field Bell is magnificent, and her poems will ravish you.”

—Lily Hoàng, author of A Bestiary

Poetry Collection

Forthcoming from Finishing Line Press

Spring 2026