Cold Thief Place
| Author | Esther Lin |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Alice James Books |
Publication date | March 11, 2025 |
| Pages | 100 |
| Award | Alice James Award |
| ISBN | 978-1949944709 |
Cold Thief Place is a 2025 debut poetry collection by Esther Lin. Filled with poems about Lin's own experience as an undocumented immigrant in the United States for 21 years, it won the 2023 Alice James Award and was longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry.[1][2]
Critical reception
In a starred review, Publishers Weekly concluded that "These stunning poems breathe new life into the confessional form."[3]
Christopher Kempf, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, lauded Lin's clean, spare style, as well as her ability to sharply observe the undocumented immigrant experience, calling it an "impressive debut" by "a first-book writer already possessed of the graceful touch of the master."[4]
In The Rumpus, Asa Drake wrote that "Esther Lin's Cold Thief Place is a testament to this kind of liberation through art—the ability to find oneself reflected in the canon and to, in turn, offer that visibility to others."[5]
References
- ^ Yorker, The New (2025-09-12). "The 2025 National Book Awards Longlist". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2025-12-28.
- ^ "BOMB Magazine | Esther Lin by Aditi Bhattacharjee". BOMB Magazine. Retrieved 2025-12-28.
- ^ "Cold Thief Place by Esther Lin". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2025-12-28.
- ^ "My Poem with This Wailing in the Background". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2025-03-11. Retrieved 2025-12-28.
- ^ Drake, Asa (2025-08-28). "I Thought America Was the Thief: Mastery and Assimilation in Esther Lin's "Cold Thief Place"". The Rumpus. Retrieved 2025-12-28.