Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Let the Moon Wobble by Ally Ang, which will be published on November 11, 2025 by Alice James Books. You can pre-order your copy here.
In poems born of intense loneliness, grief, anger, and uncertainty at the convergence of multiple apocalypses: a raging pandemic, a worsening climate crisis, multiple global uprisings, and ever-persisting violence, Ally Ang’s Let the Moon Wobble asks and seeks to answer the question: what makes the end of the world worth surviving?
Ang’s debut considers multiple speakers’ journeys through concurrent apocalypses: the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the rise of fascism. These poems span a wide range of forms and poetic traditions, full of humor, lyricism, and endearing absurdity. They emerge from the speaker’s need to process their emotions and feelings of helplessness. As Ang aches for connection to their communities and lineage in a time of unrelenting isolation, their poems plumb the depths of grief and rage against the systems and institutions that aim to repress and kill queer people of color.
Coursing through Let the Moon Wobble is the deep desire for wildness, freedom from convention and constraint, and to be seen; the speaker often takes up so much space that they’re impossible to ignore or erase. Ultimately, where we land is in a place of hope and possibility where what’s “freshly broken” can give way to blooming. Let the Moon Wobble is a testament to the ways queer joy and community can fuel resistance and allow us to imagine radical new ways of being.
Here is the cover, designed by Tiani Kennedy with artwork by Katherine Bradford:
Ally Ang: In 2023, I saw an exhibit titled “Flying Woman: The Paintings of Katherine Bradford” at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. I wasn’t familiar with Bradford’s work prior to seeing the exhibit, but I was immediately taken with her lush, bright colors; the dreamy, often eerie way she uses light; her cosmic settings; and how she renders people in a way that is both warm, with a sense of community and affection between her subjects, and distant, abstracting their features. I didn’t actually see “Swimmers Outer Space,” the painting that graces the cover of my book, at the Frye that day, but Bradford’s work stayed with me long after I first encountered it. When my press asked for suggestions for artists whose work I wanted to consider for cover art, Bradford quickly came to mind.
To encapsulate the spirit of Let the Moon Wobble, I knew that my ideal cover would be something colorful, whimsical, and celestial. Because so much of the book is grounded in connection—between the speaker and their self, their ghosts, their community, and the world around them—it feels fitting that the cover features people in communion with each other and with nature. Yet the moon, large and luminous and full, is undoubtedly the focal point of the painting. While the poems in the book are not directly about the moon, the moon appears as an image in many poems, and I think of it as a central figure of the book, even when it is merely an observer.
I also adore how otherworldly the cover image is: as the title “Swimmers Outer Space” indicates, both the moon and the body of water that the swimmers are in appear extraterrestrial, as though the scene takes place on another planet. In Let the Moon Wobble, the speaker often imagines and yearns for a different world from the harsh, dismal one we currently inhabit, and this image feels like a portal into a dreamlike alternate reality that exists in the realm of play and imagination.
Finally, in terms of design, I love how the title text is curved and off-center, mimicking the shape of the moon. It feels like the title is another celestial body that fits into this surreal landscape (or spacescape). I’m very grateful to Katherine Bradford for allowing me to use her painting, and to Tiani Kennedy for turning it into such a beautiful book cover.
Tiani Kennedy: To be able to design a cover using one of Katherine Bradford’s work of art was an honor and I’m grateful to Ally Ang for choosing a piece that’s both vibrant and complex. The swimmers seem on the edge of the earth, not exactly swimming, but reaching out to the moon longingly as if begging to be saved. It’s that same longing that’s echoed in Ang’s collection as they grapple with making sense of the senseless and what it means to exist in a body that society deems an “other” all while emerging defiant and standing firm in one’s desire. I wanted the art to be the focal point, to be a window into what readers would experience as soon as they opened the book. As a result, I opted for minimal typography and introduced the title in the shape of a half-moon to create yet another layer of movement without distracting from the painting.
