Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Night Owl by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, which will be published on March 21, 2026 by Ecco. You can pre-order your copy here.
From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders and Bite by Bite, Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s fifth collection of poetry explores love, nature, and the transformative powers of the night.
In her latest poetry collection, Aimee Nezhukumatathil plumbs the depths of nighttime, crafting a series of nocturnes that explore the magic, sensuality, and life that emerge as the rest of the world goes to bed.
Night Owl navigates questions and concerns for the environment that envelops us. It meditates on our connections to family and beloveds, and explores our position within the broader beauty of the planet. Just as the night transforms how we see things, so too does love in its many forms transform our understanding of togetherness and the natural world. And these poems are deeply suffused with love—each an expression of Nezhukumatathil’s captivating responses to the animals, plants, and people who have her heart and enliven her world.
Night Owl presents a dazzling vision of nature that celebrates the beautiful noises and silences of this planet, as well as its many complications. Nezhukumatathil provides a singular contribution to writing on the natural world, calling up our sense of love—even in the face of increasing violence to one another and the environment—by focusing on the transformative impact of the dark.
Here is the cover, painted by Charlie Buckley:
Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Our sleepy little college town of Oxford, MS, boasts a bounty of artists and writers. I’ve been a fan of Charlie Buckley’s landscapes for years, often staring perhaps uncomfortably long at his magnificent and giant paintings that are wider than my outstretched arms. But it was always his paintings of night time landscapes that I found especially moving and ethereal.
I simply don’t know another artist who can paint the stars so they seem bright-hot, shimmering off the canvas, you’d almost swear the paint was still wet. I chose his painting, “Flooded Nocturne,” (48”x41”) and when I first saw this cover from the design team at Ecco, I gasped. The painting feels like a secret kept between sky and water, where dusk leans into darkness and a whole new world of possibility begins to hum and chirp with cricket and frogsong. I love how the trees stand both rooted and reflected—echoes of themselves—suggesting the way our inner lives often double and deepen when the sun slips away. That wash of color at the horizon seems to me is neither day nor night, but the charged threshold between, a space where transformation can take hold, much like in the poems and myths of ancient Greece.
The mirrored trees, doubled and glowing, carry the same tenderness and mystery I hope these poems hold: how the world shifts when most are asleep, but for night owls like me, that’s when I work. And of course there are so many plants and other animals that really come alive at night too, so it’s another reminder— especially during these trying times— we’re not alone.
My poems in Night Owl circle around what it means to be a woman with brown skin, a mother, a daughter, and someone who loves the outdoors, especially at night. I also never saw too many poems about the outdoors featuring a woman who cherishes the outdoors and who actually enjoys spending time with their children and/or with their husband. Who is a daughter who loves spending time with her parents. And has her own communities of friends too. I wanted there to be something positive shown about these kinds of relationships. We see so often publishers churn out these books featuring awful family members, and those are important, but dang, it’s also important to show happiness and love and desire and contentment sometimes too, no?
The stars scattered across the sky remind me that what glitters in the dark is not absence but presence, like a chorus of ghosts and memories and wishes waiting to be faced and considered. I wanted to include curiosity and wonder about the night sky. I wanted to showcase that the night is not something to be afraid of, that it could be a place of transformation and wonder. That’s what the ancient Greeks viewed it as before it became associated with criminal activity and scariness. It was actually a place where metamorphosis happens. This is exactly the kind of magic—the kind of noticing and listening— and the kind of astonishment I hope readers will bring with them into these poems.
Allison Saltzman: The cover process started in a very different direction, with me creating a cut-paper owl. I was inspired by several of Aimee’s poems, whose lines were arranged to form animal shapes. I also experimented with images of climbing vines, because one of her poems described her love as leaves that continue to “grow and grow.”
Aimee was enthusiastic about all the covers we shared, but then she visited an art gallery in her hometown, saw this gorgeous painting by Charlie Buckley, Flooded Nocturne, and knew she’d found her ideal book cover. I was unfamiliar with Charlie’s work, but grateful for her introduction. The painting is a perfect match for the wondrous mood of Aimee’s poems.
