Before we jump into sharing info about this month’s book, we’re super excited to announce that this year we launched a new monthly “Community Kindness Sponsorship,” which helps offset the cost of the extra 15 books we hide after scavenger hunt weekend every month (the “random act of kindness” books!). We are so grateful to share that our friends at the UA Poetry Center are our Community Kindness Sponsor for April, which is also National Poetry Month! If you don’t know much about the UA Poetry Center, their mission is to advance a diverse and robust literary culture that serves a local-to-global spectrum of writers, readers, and new audiences for poetry and the literary arts.

Do you know someone who might be interested in partnering with us as a Community Kindness Sponsor in 2025 ($250)? We have three months left! Please send us an email (tucsontomegnome[at]gmail.com)!

AND NOW, for what you’ve been waiting for: all about this month’s hidden book!

About the book, from Macmillan:

“How many bad lovers have gotten poems? How many crushes? No disrespect to romantic love—but what about our friends ? Those homies who are there all along—cheering for us and reminding us that love is abundant.”

In this groundbreaking collection of poems, José Olivarez explores every kind of love—self, brotherly, romantic, familial, cultural. Grappling with the contradictions of the American Dream with unflinching humanity, he lays bare the ways in which “love is complicated by forces larger than our hearts.”

Whether readers enter this collection in English or via the Spanish translation by poet David Ruano González, these extraordinary poems are sure to become beloved for their illuminations of life—and love.

About the author, José Olivarez:

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants, and the author of two collections of poems, including, most recently, Promises of Gold—which was long listed for the 2023 National Book Awards. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. Along with Felicia Rose Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. Alongside Antonio Salazar, he published the hybrid book, Por Siempre in 2023. He lives in Jersey City, NJ.

In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere.

As a performer and educator, Olivarez has delivered workshops and performances across the United States and México at festivals like the San Antonio Book Festival, the Wisconsin Book Festival, The National Book Festival, the O Miami Poetry Festival, and more. He has presented at universities including Northwestern University, The University of Missouri- Kansas City, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, SUNY College at Geneseo, Napa Valley College, and more.

Why I selected Promises of Gold for the April 2025 Giveaway:

• This beautiful poetry collection examines so many forms of love and relationships: the distant relationship between Mexican fathers and their sons, the relationships between Mexican mothers and Catholicism, romantic love, and the effects of wealth (or lack thereof).
• This gnome loves that the book is written in both English and Spanish: When you flip the book over and upside down and open it from the back cover, you experience all the same poems in Spanish. “Promesas de Oro” was translated by David Ruano González, making this book accessible to both English and Spanish speakers ❤
• The language included in this collection is generous to readers: José uses accessible language, and everyone, regardless of educational background, can find something to enjoy his poems.
• Finally, we love this book because José cares about his readers: “My work: to do more than reproduce the toxic stories I inherited & learned … My work: to write poems that make my people feel safe, seen, or otherwise loved,” he finished.