"Thompson’s book is, despite what many would have us believe, an American story. It is about the power to make oneself over, to build on the rubble of the past something new, better, more. Throughout this achingly beautiful collection, Thompson falls apart and comes back together again, over and over and over in a brutal reshaping, diving into tsunami waves to come out the other side, themselves. An essential read."

- Eirinie Carson, author The Dead Are Gods

“When the world, your family, the news on the evening television tries to erase and distort you, we need anthems of becoming that allow us to dream and imagine a world we get to claim and love ourselves. To exist without being at war with your body is the light these poems are reaching for, reminding us that “for the people whose families can’t hold them/you were born to swim”. Thompson’s poems bring us through fear and violence to the beautiful possibilities of queer love, the audacity of survival, and how forgiving others with generosity can be a part of how we heal and free ourselves. The beautiful lyricism of these poems, the adamant entanglement with love and authenticity is exactly what we need.”

- Noah Arhm Choi, author of Cut To Bloom

“This life / my life / that chose me / gave me a blessing in swallowing me whole,” Thompson writes in A Congregation of Alligators, a poetry collection that meditates inside the wreckage and wonder of becoming. Thompson’s poems are generous—an offering of forgiveness with teeth—extending tenderness to all those, including the self, in the aftermath.”

- Hieu Minh Nguyen, Not Here

“Grayson Thompson writes with a quiet dignity that belies his formal mastery and his clever command of language. A Congregation of Alligators is many things—a reminiscence, an affirmation, a brave and painstaking assessment of personal traumas—but its power comes from resisting the reinvention, the clean break. Instead, Thompson shows that one’s current life is not a transformation, but a culmination of who one has always been, with moments of desperation and adversity built upon, not shed. Panoramic and somber, the collection details a whole person, one you can sit in silence with for a long time.”

- J. Howard Roiser, of the National Book Critics circle

“A writer's responsibility is to create a world so undeniable the reader has no option than to see themselves within it, in Congregations of Alligators Thompson accomplishes just that. Each poem is both question and answer to queer resilience, joy and determination. A reminder to look at the miles of grief without blinking, leaving mistakes in big font for those seeking to find themselves in poetry.”

– Yesika Salgado, author of Corazón

“These poems feel celebratory in their memory and their making: a visceral discovery of how one poet makes it through. Childhood, displacement, returning to the body, Black, Queer, survival: here is a wonderful, surprising new voice.”

- Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate

“In Sand Bodied Florida Boy, a collection full of love and determination, Grayson writes, “to show up here, every day/an honest star.” These poems articulate how much it matters to show up, to wake up, to claim your true self, despite pain and grief and loss. Can poetry save us? Maybe not, but it can help us “to realize I was never a metaphor/for wrong.”

—Katherine Riegel, author of Love Songs from the End of the World and Co-Founder of Sweet Lit

“Sand-Bodied Florida Boy is a lyrical journey through the labyrinth of memory and identity. This skillfully crafted chapbook explores the complex tapestry of childhood, queerness, and the enduring power of vulnerability. With "Remember all the names that brought you," Thompson invites readers to delve into a world where unwavering love and actualization intertwine. This transformative book is "what love sounds like when it comes home."

— Lexi Pelle, author of Let Go With The Lights On

“The title of Grayson Thompson’s Sand Bodied Florida Boy makes me imagine a young Black boy who buries himself in the sand of the beach, and when he leaves, the small imprint of his body is left behind. In this collection, Thompson similarly forces us to confront the body-shaped void that boyhood can dig into the ground. These poems masterfully teeter on the sharp edge on which childhood innocence is lost, show us the moments in which the vibrant, child-like world is revealed to be an illusion as thin as paper. Thompson writes, “in childhood when we had the ability to see / the world / naked and asking / all the tough questions…” What comes after that childhood curiosity, that free nakedness? Grief. Understanding. Running from a hungry tide.”

- Taylor Byas, author of I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, Winner of the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award

“Sand whose nature provides a way for impressions to be made, feels like an apt metaphor for what grief and trauma do to a body. Thompson’s collection asks me to sift through time whose capacity has the power to heal and also reminds us of all that we’ve endured. Like sand, these poems seek to name many harms endured and from that place rebuild anew as Thompson writes, “but I know what loving myself is now/ it’s building a poem/ heart break by heart break.” Thompson’s poems teach me that no body travels a journey unscathed and as we learn to love our grit, which these poems have, we allow ourselves and others grace and the power of the written word. "

— Dare Williams, poet and literary worker

“Sand whose nature provides a way for impressions to be made, feels like an apt metaphor for what grief and trauma do to a body. Thompson’s collection asks me to sift through time whose capacity has the power to heal and also reminds us of all that we’ve endured. Like sand, these poems seek to name many harms endured and from that place rebuild anew as Thompson writes, “but I know what loving myself is now/ it’s building a poem/ heart break by heart break.” Thompson’s poems teach me that no body travels a journey unscathed and as we learn to love our grit, which these poems have, we allow ourselves and others grace and the power of the written word. "

—Steven Reigns, author of Inheritance and A Quilt for David