Lucia LoTempio is the author of Hot with the Bad Things (Alice James Books, 2020). You can find her work in West Branch, BOAAT, Verse, The Journal, TYPO, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, and elsewhere. With Suzannah Russ Spaar, she co-authored the chapbook Undone in Scarlet (Tammy, 2019). Lucia lives and writes in Minneapolis.

“The imagination is limited in its ability to understand, directly, the suffering of others, but in recognizing this failure, LoTempio validates readers who empathize with the victim of the Geneseo murder, the speaker of the book, and the speaker's former self. It is possible, through poetry, to step through the recesses of time and console the younger self, one less equipped with knowledge and self-empowerment. Rather than victim-blaming, this is a recognition, a forgiveness, a revision.”
—Jenny Molberg, The Cincinnati Review

“Fiery and lyrically gorgeous, Lucia LoTempio’s expertly crafted Hot with the Bad Things is a siren, a temperature rising, a “vibration charted like an echo,” and a testament to both the experience and devastating aftermath of trauma.”
—Madeleine Barnes, Tinderbox Poetry

“An essaying lyric on rape culture and sexual violence … Hot with the Bad Things does important work thinking through and witnessing trauma with gorgeous intellect.”
—Kelly Weber, The Colorado Review

"As LoTempio’s lyric unfolds, her thematic work becomes more and more engrossing, tangling the speaker’s past and future as she traces the imprint of trauma."
—The Harvard Crimson

“You tell yourself who you are – the good, the bad. You have opinions but wonder if they are yours. LoTempio challenges you to look for a life somewhere between love, abuse, and self.”
—The Poetry Question

"Lucia LoTempio’s Hot with the Bad Things is a book that thinks about and thinks about thinking about violence, patriarchy, memory, witnessing, and more in ways unlike anything I have ever read. It truly wonders about the ethical conundrums of the poet, the reporter, the watcher—anye who wants to tell the story, as she writes, in ‘a way that isn’t obliteration.’ This book does beautiful, crucial, and difficult work."
—Ross Gay

“Lucia LoTempio's Hot with the Bad Things will hold you captive in its mesmerizing and enchanting poetic swirls and flourishes, its detours and narrow escapes from harm and the confines of language itself. She writes, ‘Listen: if nothing goes to plan, imagine it as bad as possible.’ The small town turns horrific; the girl is murdered; the life one lives transforms into one's bad dream. Escape before you're obliterated, this work warns in its riveting Siren call. Listen: it wants to keep you alive. I am grateful for having heard this song, no matter how tragic and sorrowful. Hot with the Bad Things signals a new, daring, and beautiful voice in poetry and its vast imaginative forms.”
—Jenny Boully

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