Kay E. Bancroft‘s debut poetry collection, Bloodroom, was a finalist for the 2025 Alice James Book Award. It is set for publication on June 9, 2026, from Sundress Publications.
Bancroft poet, editor, educator, and artist based in Cincinnati, OH with an MFA in Creative Writing — Poetry from Randolph College.
We’re excited to reveal the Bloodroom‘s cover, designed by Kristen Camille Ton, along with a Q&A from Bancroft below.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
Throughout the writing process I definitely daydreamt about what the possibilities could be! Three things I had hoped for were that it had some element of the body present on the cover, included artwork created by a fat woman/nonbinary artist, and a bold font.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
Working with the Sundress Publications team has been truly lovely. Once we started the process of editing the book, I began to search for artwork that felt tethered to the poems in the collection. I’ve followed a few artists for a while and thought their work might be a fit, but when I discovered Lydia Pettit’s work I knew it had to be on the cover. Her art is so visceral and raw, so rooted in the physical and emotional with a shadow of horror, and I became immediately infatuated! Once I had a specific work in mind we sent out the request and got things finalized, and then got into different art and typeface layouts.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
It made things feel even more whole, more tangible, and was ultimately very exciting. Seeing everything tied together was an absolute dream, and made me even more excited to see it in the world.
How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?
This collection is rooted in the body, the concept of trauma as horror and haunting, and how we can redefine traumas we inherit, so I wanted the cover to feel very visceral and eerie, almost conjuring a pre-jumpscare sense of anticipation. The artwork on the cover, Don’t Look Under the Stairs, embodies not only a haunting, but also a bloodiness and reckoning, which feel central to the collection. It’s bold, evocative, and introduces the question: what comes next?, which I hope is what readers will explore in the following pages.