Reissued in March 2026, the book was a finalist for both a Lambda Literary Award and for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Prize. Lilith called the book “fascinating, compulsively readable, delightful… and tills new and important ground.”

In honor of the 30th Anniversary of National Poetry Month, please JOIN US for a reading by Hudson Valley poet Catherine Arra from her latest chapbook, PERENNIAL COSMOLOGY, exploring “the life-death cycle in nature and in everday living.”

Gail Straub and Steve Gorn invite you to a special event at Blue Heron Books honoring our unity as a human family across cultures and time.

First Rule of Fire by Rebecca Gopoian explores how history can never truly be erased, no matter how hard we try to deny or forget. Told in interwoven narratives, the novel explores the lives of three characters as they seek safety, love, and belonging, beginning in Eastern Turkey 1914, at the start of the Armenian Genocide to 1980’s New Jersey.