A poetic roman à clef, gauguin's notebook follows an anonymous protagonist - who keeps a diary while reading through Paul Gauguin's Tahiti - as he travels clandestinely across the U.S. - Mexico border and in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. What begins as a search for a strange angel quickly descends into the mire of Internet forums, where narco terror, soldier porn, and blue stars give the impression that amid forced immigration and self-exile there's also something searing, tragic, and funny when what you love gets irrevocably lost.

The winner of the 2015 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize, gauguin's notebook was selected by the acclaimed poet and translator Eleni Sikelianos, author most recently of You Animal Machine (The Golden Greek) (Coffee House Press, 2014) and The Loving Detail of the Living & the Dead (Coffee House Press, 2013).