The poet chose to give her first book a title that is also the name of an Australian band and that has been used to sum up eroticism and violence as two fundamental aspects of life. Taken together the poems in this collection tell a coming-of-age story of a girl born in the Eastern Kentucky mountains. "Rachel Danielle Peterson's collection, A Girl's A Gun, reads as part tall tale, part bildungsroman, part geode. These are poems meant to be enclosed in a palm and pressed against the heart. Peterson's strengths are in her cinematic depictions of women, her vibrant imagery, and the precision with which she code-switches into the tongue of the mountains.” – Bianca Lynne Spriggs. Rachel Danielle Peterson was born in Harlan County, Kentucky, and graduated from high school and college in Ohio. She holds an MFA in poetry from Ashland University in Ohio and an MA in Religion from Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017. 59 pages. Trade paperback,