Press one if you’d like to speak to Attila the Hun.
Press two if your Jacuzzi is filled with eels.”
– 
from “A Short History of Sublime Moments on Hold,” by Amy Gerstler

Scattered at Sea, a poetry collection by UCI English professor Amy Gerstler, is in the running for the 2015 National Book Award for Poetry. Gerstler, who teaches in UCI’s M.F.A. Programs in Writing, was selected as one of 10 contenders for the prestigious literary prize. Her works of poetry, nonfiction and journalism have appeared in The New YorkerThe Paris Review and The American Poetry Review. One of her previous poetry collections won a National Book Critics Circle Award and another was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Scattered at Sea has won critical praise for its “sharp-edged wisdom” and “keen sense of the absurd.”