irene latham
"Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for." -Ray Bradbury
All About Me
Irene Latham writes poems and stories from the Purple Horse Poetry Studio & Music Room located beside a lake in Blount County, Alabama. The author or co-author of twenty-five children's books, she's best known for her poetry—read hundreds of Irene's poems for free at irenelatham.com—and for her debut historical fiction novel Leaving Gee's Bend (Penguin, 2010). Other books of note include African Town (Penguin Random House, 2022), winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Outstanding Historical Fiction and The Cat Man of Aleppo (Penguin Random House, 2020), which was awarded a Caldecott Honor. She's delighted to be entering the adult space with her novel, Some Starry Night, in which she brings together two of her favorite creators—Emily Dickinson and Vincent van Gogh—to “dwell in possibility” and to create a joyful, impasto landscape where, at least for a moment, and perhaps for eternity, these two brilliant, tragic figures can learn to transcend the ordinary and unravel the mysteries of love, faith, and creativity.
My HP Books
COMING SPRING OF 2026
Some Starry Night imagines the story behind Vincent van Gogh's most famous painting, Starry Night, and the secret love affair with American poet Emily Dickinson that inspired it.
Featuring an imaginative dive into the lives of famous figures like Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan Henry and an uplifting/live-life-to-the-fullest message like The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer, it offers an immersive experience through lyrical prose and powerful storytelling.
The book opens with Vincent van Gogh's arrival in Paris, the spring of 1886. Penniless but determined, Vincent moves in with his brother Theo and vows to turn his life around, to create art, to (finally!) give something valuable to the world. Meanwhile, in America, Emily Dickinson has just received a fatal diagnosis. Instead of holing up at the Homestead as her family and all of Amherst expects, she joins her sister-in-law and boards a ship bound for Paris. “Shortness to live has made her bold,” and she sets out to live her remaining days and nights as fully as possible. Everything intensifies when she meets Vincent and agrees to sit for a portrait.
Told in prose, poems, letters, and actual quotes from Emily and Vincent, the heart of the novel is the messy, unexpected, and electric relationship between these two cultural icons, altering many of the stories we've been told about them, while also deepening our understanding of the impact of love on creativity, faith, and even death.
