Margins
So, Stranger book cover
So, Stranger
2022
First Published
4.28
Average Rating
79
Number of Pages
Topaz Winters’ third poetry collection spans three countries & three generations. In a far-reaching & deftly-woven series of ars poeticas, Winters questions the boundary between the things we inherit & those we owe, stands at the grave of the American dream, & unspools the enormous grace & guilt of being loved. So, Stranger stands as a fixed mark between the shifting histories & futures of being a daughter, being an artist, & being an immigrant. If its reader begins as a stranger, they end as part of a lineage: one both of grief & glory, of distance & arrival.
Avg Rating
4.28
Number of Ratings
99
5 STARS
46%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
11%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads

Author

Topaz Winters
Topaz Winters
Author · 6 books

I am an internationally-award winning & critically-acclaimed poet, essayist, editor, performer, artist, & scholar. I’m the author of So, Stranger (Button Poetry 2022), Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing (2019), & poems for the sound of the sky before thunder (Math Paper Press 2017), & the founder & editor-in-chief of the publishing house & literary journal Half Mystic. My peer-reviewed research on poetry & queerness in Singapore is published in the Journal of Homosexuality, & is taught at the University of Southern California’s doctorate programme in educational leadership. My poetry, essays, & art have been published in & featured by venues from The Straits Times to American Banker to the Singapore Writers Festival to the Center for Fiction to the Academy of American Poets. I’ve traveled across the world teaching & performing poetry, & my photography & performance art have been exhibited in Singapore & the United States. In 2017 I gave the TEDx talk Healing Is a Verb. I’m the writer & star of the critically-acclaimed short film SUPERNOVA (recipient of awards from the Newark International, Across Asia Youth, Laurie Nelson, My Rode Reel, Singapore International Student, & CINE Golden Eagle Film Festivals), & from 2015 to 2022 I wrote the annual column Silver-Tipped Swallow for Half Mystic Journal. I’m 23 years old, & I study English Literature, Creative Writing, Italian, & Visual Art at Princeton University. I live between Singapore & Brooklyn. I like used bookstores, rosé, honeybees, classic rock, red lipstick, & the sea.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2026 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved