Abomination Pink by Zuggie Tate
Abomination Pink
Bridges Series #1
Copyright © 2026 by Zuggie Tate
ISBN: 979-8-950353-01-7
Retail Price: $14.00
Publication Date: July 16, 2026
Chapbook; 6 x 9” Paperback; 36 Pages
Distributed by Ingram and Sibling Rivalry Press
Author is available for appearances and interviews
Publisher Contact: [email protected]
Trade, library, and educational discounts available
Desk copies available for educators
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Keywords: Trans Poetry, Queer Poetry, LGBTQ+ Voices, Gender Identity, Black Trans Poetry, Black LGBTQ Voices, Trans Liberation, Self-Creation, Survival and Resilience, Body Politics, Religious Trauma, Church and Faith, Mental Health, Healing and Transformation, Self-Love
In Abomination Pink, Zuggie Tate transforms survival into song, offering a fierce and luminous meditation on Black Trans womanhood, faith, desire, grief, and self-invention. Moving between the sanctuaries and wounds of church, family, community, and body, these poems confront violence without surrendering to it, insisting instead on joy, tenderness, rage, and radical self-definition. Tate crafts a mythology where Trans women are flowers, storms, saints, witches, martyrs, and gods unto themselves. Unflinching, intimate, and unforgettable, Abomination Pink is a chapbook of reclamation-a testament to the beauty that survives every attempt at erasure and the power of naming oneself into existence.
Abomination Pink is the first of the Bridges Series, hosted by Sibling Rivalry Press, an annual chapbook series curated each year by a different poet invited to serve as guest editor and curator. Each curator selects four authors whose chapbooks will be published by Sibling Rivalry Press, creating space for new voices, unexpected conversations, and vibrant literary community. Rooted in SRP's core belief that poetry builds bridges and saves lives, the series seeks to connect writers across identities, geographies, generations, and experiences while championing work that is fearless and transformative. The 2026 curator is Kay Ulanday Barrett.
Of Abomination Pink, Ulanday Barrett says, "We find a beckoning, an anointment, and on almost every page, a reclamation. In an era of policing and empire, Tate ventures forth and elaborates her vision with gusto. Here, clashes and tensions don’t simply move; they transcend through beguiling language. Unfurling the religious, the natural, the everyday, and the iconic, Abomination Pink inhabits multitudes with candor. Through vessels of spirit, recipe, gospel, grief, and the gradations of femmeness, the stanzas erupt with vulnerability. Tate’s writing reaches with an aptitude for thunderous imagery and Black Trans dynamism that is gripping. These poems navigate how longing and triumph teach us not only how to survive but how to expand survival through imagination and gumption. As Tate confesses, 'I want to be brave, ruby red fearless.' This debut chapbook does exactly that—and more."
"Abomination Pink takes our society’s obsessive, murderous gaze on Black Trans women and turns it inside-out—wringing it for blood to feed Tate’s garden of defiant sovereignty and self-expression. This book will break your heart. Hold it to your chest and feel the rhythm, then keep going! These poems never allow us enough catharsis to forget: there is work to be done. " - Noor ('Ditee) Jaber, author of Praise to Lesser Gods of Love
ZUGGIE TATE (she/her) is a Cleveland-based poet and spoken word artist whose work centers Black Trans life, resilience, and liberation. A recipient of the Margie’s Hope Living Heritage Award and a Lambda Literary Fellow, her poetry transforms survival into testimony, celebrating beauty, community, and the possibility of freer futures.