poetry
Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2024
These poems serve as a restoration project by articulating the everyday unsaid of love, not just in romantic contexts, but as a friend, sister, daughter, dog parent, wildflower admirer, and mother. The collection’s frequent use of archaic poetic forms (the Sapphic stanza, ode, curtal sonnet, and cento) and homages to Virginia Woolf, William Wordsworth, and Gerard Manley Hopkins claims literary legacies that have historically excluded women and queer writers.
This wry celebration of good, bad, ugly, thirsty, reverent, compassionate, unrequited, and fully granted love rouses new lexicons of connection and belonging. As poet J. Allyn Rosser observes of Candace, “Her poems—intensely, warily—celebrate familial, platonic, and romantic bonds, even as they ponder vestiges of the trauma love can leave behind.”
creative nonfiction
Licking the Spoon
A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity
Seal Press, 2012
“In the spirit of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn and Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking, Candace Walsh uses the story of her passionate relationship to food to frame a powerful and honest account of her life.”
—Gretchen Rubin, author of the New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project
“When Candace Walsh writes with pride and joy of the day she brought her shiny, new KitchenAid home and recalls tenderly the comfort found in a simple chicken fricassée, those moments shimmer like oil in a hot pan.”
—Kirkus
“Funny, moving, and as irresistible as chocolate cake, Candace Walsh’s delicious memoir isn’t just a coming-of-age of a remarkable woman by way of the kitchen pantry, but a smart, gorgeously written exploration of the foods—and the people—who really nourish us.”
—Caroline Leavitt, author of the New York Times bestseller Pictures of You
“Candace Walsh’s luscious prose brings this memoir vividly to life. She weaves the comfort of food throughout her brave and ultimately uplifting quest to find her witty wonderful self. And we readers are nourished by coming along on Walsh’s journey. Bon appetit.”
—Cheryl Alters Jamison, four-time James Beard Award-winning author of Smoke & Spice, Tasting New Mexico, The Border Cookbook, and The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking & Entertaining
“Like Jane Eyre and Heartburn, Licking the Spoon is a book you won't be able to put down and a story you won't soon forget.”
—Theo Pauline Nestor, author of How to Sleep Alone in a King-Sized Bed
edited anthologies
Greetings from Janeland
Women Write More About Leaving Men for Women
Cleis Press, 2017
Dear John, I Love Jane
Women Write About Leaving Men
for Women
Seal Press, 2010
Ask Me About My Divorce
Women Open Up About Moving On
Seal Press, 2009