Knowing How to Lose is the name of my poetry chapbook, finally submitted to the publisher this week, which is a great load off of my plate and off of my mind. Twenty-two poems make up the collection. Fifteen of them were published prior to the chapbook coming together but were also revised from their originally published form in some way. The earliest published poem in the collection is “Childhood Sunday Mornings,” which appeared in Clinch Mountain Review in Fall 2010. The most recently published poems appeared online at Marshall University’s Critical Humanities, in their Fall issue (“The Circus” and “Memory-Go-Round”). Those two are a couple of my favorites and are part of a trilogy of poems I wrote at Denton’s The Orchard Keepers residency last year, shortly before I started submitting the collection into contests for consideration for publication.
The collection is being published by Finishing Line Press in Kentucky. They’re well known for publishing poetry chapbooks and have been doing so for many years. I entered my collection into their “Women’s Voices” competition in mid-October. I had entered it into a couple of other contests before that and received rejections. Connie Jordan Green, the marvelous poet and friend in East Tennessee, who sponsored a chapbook class that nine of us in the Tennessee Mountain Writers organization took for nine months in Fall 2024-Summer 2025, told each of us that we needed to submit our work in the Finishing Line Press “Women’s Voices” contest. A few of us did what Connie of us told us to do. On January 14, I learned that I was not one of the winners of the contest, but that my chapbook had been selected to be published, along with several others, as part of the Finishing Line catalog from the entries received. Four of us from Connie’s class received that email. I think we must have had a pretty phenomenal teacher for our poetry class, and a great group of cheerleaders!
So, why such a downer title? It’s really not as much of a downer as it sounds. It’s about how those who know how to lose are well-equipped to endure. Here’s my official synopsis. “In the rugged landscape of Central Appalachia, tragedy and misfortune are as common as the mountains, and sometimes as stunning. In Knowing How to Lose, Chrissie Anderson Peters explores her childhood and coming of age in 1970s/1980s Appalachia. At the center of these poems is her complicated family life, headed by a single mom. In these poems, Peters also examines the cultural identity of the mountain South and its people. Given all kinds of hardship, her people continue to survive just as she perseveres, finding resilience in the face of adversity.”
The target release date is March 2027. There will be a pre-sale at least nine weeks prior to the release date, which will be very important for me. With Finishing Line Press (and lots of other presses these days), the presale period determines the market for your work further down the road. More specifically, it determines what your lifetime royalties on the work will be. With Finishing Line Press, I need to sell a specific number to hit 20% lifetime royalties and a higher number to hit 30% lifetime royalties. While I would love to hit 30% royalties, I am shooting initially for 20% —but I’m more than willing to readjust that goal if I hit 20% early in the presale period! The books will need to be ordered directly through Finishing Line Press during the pre-sale period, but they will offer a discount for doing that. So, I hope you will follow me on social media and here on my website to watch for the pre-sale information and consider buying copies for yourself and maybe for friends and family who might also enjoy the book.
Special thanks to Pat Shrader at Blue Ridge Expressions for shooting my new author’s pictures and to Kim Crowder for the amazing photo that will grace the cover —it was taken at Warriors Path State Park in Kingsport, TN, and is stunning. I can’t wait for everyone to see it!
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