In this collection of lyric essays, which Erin Jones calls “beautiful and haunting,” Jen Soriano tackles chronic pain, climate change, toxic masculinity and the atomic bomb. Using personal stories as a window into big ideas, Soriano dissects destructive systems while asking readers to question our individual roles in maintaining them. Each essay is a study in experimentation with creative nonfiction form; Soriano blends poetry and prose and plays with structure, such that form follows meaning, and meaning is deepened by the spatial arrangement of words on the page.

Making the Tongue Dry depicts the truth of how the pain of the body and the pain of history are constant, yet often denied to those who suffer it most. The intimacy and cruelty of violence on personal and international levels, the human cost for victim and perpetrator, for witnesses and instigators, bystanders...deep complexities, sensitively captured.​

- Khadijah Queen, author of I'm So Fine and Black Peculiar

Making the Tongue Dry was a finalist in the Newfound, Cutbank and Gazing Grain 2018 chapbook competitions. The print chapbook was published by Arts by the People in three limited editions designed and handbound by artist LK James.