A poetic roman à clef, gauguin's notebook follows an anonymous protagonist—who keeps a diary while reading through Paul Gauguin's Tahiti—as he travels clandestinely across the U.S.–Mexico border and in the occupied West Bank of Palestine. What begins as a search for a strange angel quickly descends into the mire of Internet forums, where narco terror, soldier porn, and blue stars give the impression that amid forced immigration and self-exile there's also something searing, tragic, and funny when what you love gets irrevocably lost.

The winner of the 2015 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize, gauguin's notebook was selected by the acclaimed poet and translator Eleni Sikelianos, author most recently of You Animal Machine (The Golden Greek) (Coffee House Press, 2014) and The Loving Detail of the Living & the Dead (Coffee House Press, 2013).

CHRISTOPHER REY PÉREZ is an M.F.A. graduate of the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College and current faculty of Bard's Language and Thinking Program. His publications include On the heels of our enemies (98editions, Beirut), 427-375 (LIKE Editorial, Mexico City), and an untitled collaboration with artist Barbara Ess (321 Editions, New York City). He also writes for Intelligentsia Gallery in Beijing and edits, with Gabriel Finotti, Dolce Stil Criollo out of São Paulo. In December of 2015, he left the occupied West Bank of Palestine, where he taught at al-Quds Bard Honors College for a period of two and a half years. He is originally from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.