A Middle-Aged Woman Rages

Melissa Jørgenrud Helton's debut collection, A Middle-Aged Woman Rages, captures a life on the brink of fifty. These poems confront parenting grown children, divorce, and a country sliding toward authoritarianism, all while navigating perimenopause and fighting to sustain creativity and healing. Searing and unapologetic, Helton refuses silence. Her poems name what women are taught to swallow and model truth-telling as survival - inviting and emboldening women to speak with power and without permission.