Alicia Young’s poetry is inspired by her life experiences, which, like the lives of most of us, have been a mixed bag of both horrors and delights. The daughter of a dead drunk father and a hell-cat Baptist mother, she has worn many masks including mother, ex-wife, lover, former mortician, middling pianist and above average tap dancer. She has the tongue of a harpy, the heart of a benevolent queen, the gall of a mad king, and is rumored to be a wee bit of a tramp who learned her fi rst lessons in pain, love and joy in the highly conservative American south. Her writing celebrates human existence, in all its variety and with all its pitfalls, and is ultimately a voyage of self-discovery. She writes poetry as a way to mitigate her demons, cry to the heavens and sing triumphant the gifts granted to each of us in our tenuous hold on life. Alicia’s poetry has been called ‘poetry for people who don’t write poetry’. It is loud, vulgar, sexy and painfully sweet-and it will punch you in the mouth. Alicia Young is a poet, editor, mother of twin boys and avid reader. She is a modern day Southern belle, born on Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail, and is seventh great granddaughter of Pocahontas. She enjoys black coff ee and Wild Turkey in the morning, complemented by a fi ne cigar at night. Her Electra complex is the stuff of legend. She makes a hobby of causing blonde women to cry. Ms.Young is the baddest woman on the planet with a set of nunchaku while any southern rock is playing. Her writing has been published in The Long Islander, Cultural Weekly, American Funeral Director, The Vagina Gun, The Musophobist, The Montucky Review, Take-It-To-The-Streets-Poetry, The Juice Bar, The Moronic Ox Literary & Cultural Journal and The Mas Tequila Review. She is the author of a previous collection of poetry, Hell on Heels, published in 2012 by Lady-Lazarus Press. Fried Chicken, Schmussy, and Other Songs from a Baptist Hymnal is her second full length book of poetry.