Good Dress - Paperback

by Brittany Rogers (Author)

Winner of the Lambda Award for Bisexual Poetry

Longlisted for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award

"A once-in-a-generation debut."―Angel Nafis

"This self-assured, dazzling debut has a story to tell."―Aricka Foreman

Following the tradition of Nikky Finney, Krista Franklin, and Morgan Parker, Brittany Rogers's Good Dress documents the extravagant beauty and audacity of Black Detroit, Black womanhood, community, class, luxury, materialism, and matrilineage. A nontraditional coming of age, this collection witnesses a speaker coming into her own autonomy and selfhood as a young adult, reflecting on formative experiences. With care and incandescent energy, the poems engage with memory, time, interiority, and community. They also nudge tenderly toward curiosity: What does it mean to belong to a person, to a city? Can intimacy and romance be found outside the heteronormative confines of partnership? And in what ways can the pursuit of pleasure be an anchor that returns us to ourselves?

Author Biography

Brittany Rogers is a poet, educator, and lifelong Detroiter. She has work published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Four Way Review, underbelly, Mississippi Review, Lambda Literary, and Oprah Daily. Brittany is a fellow of VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is editor-in-chief of Muzzle magazine and co-host of VS Podcast.