Erin Hoover is the author of two poetry collections: Barnburner and No Spare People.
Out now from Black Lawrence Press, No Spare People asks: what happens to the woman no longer willing to live a lie? How does language invent not only identity, but possibility?
Publication date: October 20, 2023
$16.95
A book about peril—and joy
One of Independent Book Review’s “Books We’re Excited About,” a selection for Small Press Distribution‘s “SPD Recommends,” and a Lambda Literary “Most Anticipated” title
“Erin Hoover’s second collection, No Spare People, recalls to me the sobering effect of encountering Adrienne Rich’s work in the late ’80s. These poems deal in reality, eschewing the fantastic. … Having long played by rules so detrimental to her selfhood, the speaker of these poems shares her unvarnished truth: ‘I want to be able to talk to people / without having to f— or be f—ed, yeah?’ Hell, yeah.”
— Cate Marvin
“These are hard poems in that they press far past the facile reductive binaries of good and evil, savior and saved, and into something—a lyric, a voice—that feels a little more complicated, a little more like our own world.
— Kaveh Akbar
“The poems in No Spare People illuminate the injustices of income inequality, misogyny, womanhood and motherhood in America with an expanse of time and geography. The voices of these poems arrive at their questions and epiphanies through vivid and self-aware language: ‘It is tempting to want always to reduce the thing to its detail. To make it small.’ Read this book. Expand.'”
— K. Iver
“[These] poems do not give up, continually questioning the constraints of an American South in which ‘some days, I’m the pioneer wife, / keeper of the homestead, but others / I’m absurdly educated for a uterus.’”
— Jessica Jacobs
“As women in America, it is easy to feel that our safety is deprioritized; Hoover gives voice to this inequity.”
— Jen Gayda Gupta for Sundress Reads full review
“As a fellow mother, many of Hoover’s words resonated with me. Yet I also recommend this to readers who won’t share the same sentiments – as they might need to see life from this perspective even more.”
— Megan McCarthy-Biank for The Nerd Cantina full review
“Eloquent, elegant, deftly crafted, memorable, No Spare People will prove to be an especially prized addition to personal, community, and college/university library Contemporary American Poetry collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.”
— Midwest Book Review full review
“Hoover’s poems insist on claiming their own space. Within these spaces arise thoughtful, nuanced observations and confrontations.”
— Emily Choate for Chapter 16 full review
“The first poem in Erin Hoover’s latest collection, No Spare People, ends with the line: ‘I open my throat’ — a fierce opening to a book seething with anger and love. These poems reflect the contradictions, complications, and heartbreak of living in the world, particularly as a woman and as a mother. They are sharp, determined, tender, and open.”
— Chelsea Risley for Southern Review of Books read the interview
“No one is spared the difficulties, pains, or joys of existence, as Hoover brilliantly demonstrates throughout this book . . . The power and beauty of this remarkable, poignant, and skillfully crafted and curated collection should be experienced in full.”
— Gregory Luce for Scene 4 full review
“Hoover reminds us . . . how hard it is as a woman to be seen as a whole being. . . . [E]verybody around us, often men more than women, sees us as a different part of ourselves, parts that may not agree with each other, parts that we may need to be careful to hide or show if we want to survive an experience. But if ‘”prettier” is a door to walk through, / where does it ever get me?’ we can’t help but keep wondering.”
— Valentina Linardi for Heavy Feather Review full review
“No Spare People is gorgeous, with a philosophical throughline and an embracing of conceptual work in poems that, yes, has the kind of swagger many of us find attractive as queer, femme intellectuals. The single mother, poet-professor, speaker of the poems in No Spare People writes in the knowledge of the material and political conditions of her poems, questioning and describing and naming web of power relationships and around herself and her child, opening up, potentially, space for living beyond those structures.”
— Han VanderHart full review
Download media kit | Get author email updates
Now booking
Erin is now booking for university, festival, and other reading and speaking engagements in 2026.
Topics include: poetry, hybrid forms, narrative writing, motherhood, the American South, literary magazine editing and publishing, intersectional feminism, creative writing pedagogy
About the author
Erin Hoover teaches creative writing and literary editing as an associate professor of English at Tennessee Tech University.
She curates and hosts the in-person poetry reading series Sawmill Poetry and produces the “Not Abandon, But Abide” interview series for the Southern Review of Books.
Her debut collection, Barnburner, won Elixir Press’s Antivenom Award and a Florida Book Award in Poetry.
Hoover lives in middle Tennessee with her family but was born and raised in central Pennsylvania. In addition to teaching, she’s worked as an editor, journalist, fundraiser, and public relations director. In 2025, she was the program chair for the Appalachian Studies Association Conference, when it was hosted at Tennessee Tech.
Cover art by Ever Baldwin
Author photo by Keistyn Steward