Unbound: Rebecca Dietrich’s Under the Stars of Turtle Island
A powerful exploration of Indigenous identity, resilience, and the enduring legacy of Turtle Island
Unbound: A showcase of bold, necessary, and transformative writing.
Unbound is a recurring feature showcasing new writing and essential poetry—works that challenge, inspire, and redefine the art of language.
Rebecca Dietrich’s Under the Stars of Turtle Island is an urgent and lyrical exploration of love, grief, cultural heritage, and the lasting weight of colonization. Through poetry that is both intimate and unflinching, Dietrich charts a course across history and memory, where the echoes of the past shape the present and survival is an act of resistance.
With each poem, Dietrich invites readers into a landscape of loss and resilience, where tenderness and fury exist side by side. The journey she offers is not just personal but collective—a reckoning with identity, history, and the stories that refuse to be silenced. Under the Stars of Turtle Island is as much about remembering as it is about reclaiming, a testament to the power of words to illuminate, to grieve, and to heal.
Early praise for this collection speaks to its depth and emotional resonance:
“A deep dive into the many facets of the human psyche… Dietrich captures the essence of what it is to love, lose, and choose to love again: tragic and wonderful.”
—Jay Perry, author of Seasons: Love, Life, and Loss in Tanka
Dietrich, a Cherokee poet and photographer from Atlantic City, New Jersey, has already established herself as a formidable voice in contemporary poetry. Her debut chapbook, Scholar of the Arts and Inhumanities, won the Literary Titan Book Award for Poetry, and her work has appeared in Red Coyote, Havik, Steam Ticket, and more. With Under the Stars of Turtle Island, she continues to carve out space for voices and histories too often overlooked, writing with a clarity and passion that is impossible to ignore.
This is a book that does not ask for permission to be heard—it simply speaks, and in doing so, demands that we listen.
We can’t wait to share this powerful collection with you. Order a copy in our store (i.e., not Amazon) and follow Wayfarer Books for updates. Look for Under the Stars of Turtle Island wherever books are sold!
About the Author
Rebecca Dietrich is a Cherokee poet and photographer from Atlantic City, New Jersey. Her debut chapbook Scholar of the Arts and Inhumanities (Finishing Line Press, 2023) won the Literary Titan Book Award for Poetry. She has also published The Last Lullaby (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and On Colonized Ground (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Dietrich’s poetry has been published in Red Coyote, Havik, Steam Ticket, and elsewhere. She holds a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Stockton University. You can follow her on Instagram @limericks_and_asphodels.
