Shade Is a Place

From National Poetry Series winner MaKshya Tolbert, a “startlingly original debut” (Maggie Millner) that meanders toward possibilities of arboreal relief among entanglements of place, property, and urban planning in Charlottesville, Virginia

Shade is a placemeanders eastwest along Charlottesvilles Downtown Mall, seeking a Black sense of place at the pace of stressed shade and street trees, the malls architectural history, and the speakers ongoing questions and reflections. The collection of poems is a moving invitation to open ones attention by looking up, down, and always within. Through lyric walking poems (tree walks and shade walks) and Bash-style travelogue,Shade is a placeunfolds as much through arboreal life as through ones inner lifesometimes alone, sometimes with others, and always among turning trees.

MaKshya Tolbertpractices poetry and placemaking in Virginia, where her grandmother raised her. She is the2025 Art in Library Spaces Artist-in-Residence at the University of Virginia, and co-stewards Fernland Studios, an open-ended studio insistent onrest, rejuvenation, and reciprocity as a core compositional practice.Tolbert was the 2024 New City Arts Fellowship Guest Curator, and served as 2024-25 Chair of the Charlottesville Tree Commission. She has received fellowship and residency support from the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission, New City Arts, Community of Writers, and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. Her recent poetry and prose can be found at Poem-a-Day,Emergence Magazine,West Branch,Poets for Science, andRan Off With the Star Bassoon. She holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Gastronomic Sciences.Shade is a placeis her first book.In her free time, she is elsewherea place Eddie S. Glaude Jr. calls that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe.”

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publish Date: November 4, 2025
• Pages: 96
• Language: English
• Type: Paperback
• EAN/UPC: 9780143138457
• Dimensions: 9.0 X 6.0 X 0.3 inches | 0.3 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Poetry