I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated evokes love, grief, hope and longing across generations, continents, and devastation in Ukraine. The author uses humor and popular culture as a way to speak through her sadness. Midwest grocery stores, Tony Soprano, murderous internet moms, Soviet scientists, and the Cheesecake Factory all make an appearance in the constantly shifting landscape of this work.  This collection also contends with motherhood and what it means to parent through immense loss. Perhaps more than anything the humor in this book acts as an amplifier, a way to hear laughter as clearly as you can hear weeping.

Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine and came to the United States as a refugee in 1990. She is the winner of the 2017 Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize and is the author of American Radiance (University of Nebraska). She is a member of the Cheburashka Collective and is a former Editor of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. She holds a PhD in Poetry from the University of Houston and an MFA in poetry from Texas State University. Additional writing can be found in the Threepenny Review, Best American Poetry, OnlyPoems,and the Sun among others.