Macedonian writer, MARTA MARKOSKA, b. Skopje 1981, with a background in General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, and published in these areas, is also known as an award-winning poet and short story writer. Markoska is also well known to audiences with her Late Night Show named, "Marta's Palace", and from "The Campaign to show the Beauty of a Woman after Breast Cancer", which she is launching at the very same time as publishing this book. //In H/ERO/T/IC BOOK. Markoska writes about her passionate but tragically-ended story with her ex-husband, the devotion and loving support of one man, and her experiences with a few other men after her marriage ended, while she was struggling with the process of surviving breast cancer. / She wrote these poems as she underwent a series of aesthetic surgeries and worked at the gym to develop her body to its best perfection. In them, she rediscovers herself in her altered body, proving to herself her renewed worth as a sexual and sensual woman. // Those who have read her metaphysical poetry collection, "Black Holes Within Us", will not be disappointed. She again calls the universe into play, as both the context for her love and as providing a means for its expression. Witty and explicit, but also devoted, romantic and tender, the poems give a voice to those women who lack either the language or the courage to express and share their own experiences and emotions. Maybe the poems also encourage greater insight and self-awareness in sisters worldwide. //"In lyrical language, Markoska works her love of words into expressions of love, lust, desire, tenderness and savagery within the sphere of physical intimacy. She explores closeness and loss, rapture and pain through exciting and surprising imagery. A celebration of the body eclectic."- Joy Al-Sofi, a Proverse Poetry Prize winner, 2016.//"Poems with a palpable sense of passion which flips between love and hate, between hectoring and urging on the beloved, between repairing the breach and declaring the breach a necessary part of the exchange. Lyrics which are almost over-the-top but exhibit enough restraint to complete their ritualistic impetus: to exorcize as well as to celebrate." -Andrew Simpson Guthrie, author of Alphabet.// "Markoska's poetry turns intimacy into a primal wonder, making us ask why we had never thought of ourselves in this way. Your body is always greater than you, more expansive, much older, and wiser too."-Elbert Siu Ping Lee, author of Rain on the Pacific Coast. // "This edgy collection of poetry is simultaneously empowering, provocative and unexpectedly wistful. Marta Markoska slashes naked emotion bare, coupling it with the true physicality of need. She explores themes of feminism, abandonment, the dissipation of desire and desire itself.... A bold read - shocking in honesty and pleasurable in excellence."-Hayley Ann Solomon, author of Celestial Promise and Under the Shade of the Feijoa Trees. //
