CSU Pueblo Staff Writer Featured in Nationally Acclaimed Essay Collection on Estrangement
Catapult, April 2026
Soni Brinsko, a staff writer in the Office of Marketing, Communications, and Community Relations at Colorado State University Pueblo, published an essay in No Contact: Writers on Estrangement, a Catapult anthology edited by Jenny Bartoy that hit shelves April 28. Brinsko writes creative work under the name Soni Brown.
The collection features essays and poems by Stephanie Foo, Erika Krouse, Deesha Philyaw, Domenica Ruta, and Cheryl Strayed, among others. Brown’s contribution stands out as the only essay in the collection rooted in a Caribbean experience, approaching estrangement not as a clean break but as a particular kind of grief, one a person has to choose to move through with no guarantee it gets easier.
“I wrote from something that felt almost too specific to explain. A Caribbean woman, a particular silence, a particular kind of distance that doesn’t have a name in most families. And then the responses started coming in from people who had nothing to do with the Caribbean, and they were saying, that’s my story too. That’s what I was waiting for someone to say out loud.”
Soni Brinsko, CSU Pueblo Staff Writer
Before joining CSU Pueblo, Brinsko worked as a full-time essayist, publishing in national literary magazines and building a body of work that moved between memoir, cultural criticism, and reported narrative. She also wrote the screenplay for a documentary about Black Las Vegas, a project that traced a community’s history through the people who lived it. An essay she wrote about the experience of wanting to repatriate to Jamaica in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder earned her a Special Mention in Best American Essays 2024, recognition that placed her among the most noted essayists working in nonfiction that year.
Critical Reception
The book landed with serious momentum. Before publication, The Seattle Times and Zibby’s Highlights both named it a most anticipated book of 2026, and Library Journal featured it in their Prepub Alert Preview for the year. By the time April arrived, the Chicago Review of Books and Autostraddle were calling it a must-read book of the month.
“Sometimes we can’t even imagine how necessary a book is until we finally see it arrive into the world . . . No Contact is radically vulnerable and truly soaring in its compassion, as well as a powerful reminder that we are never truly alone.”
Michael Welch | Chicago Review of Books
“Grippingly vulnerable. For those who feel guilt after disengaging from family, this offers powerful absolution.”
Publishers Weekly
“These essays touch on themes of mental health, family trauma, shame, abuse, and identity, displaying the complexities of estrangement but also demonstrating the grit and determination of the human spirit to stay strong even during life’s most difficult challenges. Estrangement is a taboo subject, but as Bartoy mentions in her introduction, hearing true stories like these might help others feel seen and validated in their decision to cut ties.”
Booklist
“A search for compassion and conversation surrounding the decision to cut ties with family . . . The collection’s narratives and poems each articulate a severed bond and reckon with the grief, uncertainty, and potential healing that emerges from that estrangement . . . [T]he unity of voices effectively showcases how the idea of family can be so similarly upended for such a myriad of lives . . . [A] noble amplification of under-heard voices.”
Kirkus Reviews
“A landmark work around a theme so prominent, and yet so thoroughly ignored, in modern life. This collection opens chasms beyond writing and testament, but braves toward a new vision of healing, self-dignity, and, most importantly, the possibility for life’s flourishing without closure.”
Ocean Vuong
The Boston Globe praised the anthology’s breadth, noting how the contributors together build something rare: a sustained, honest look at the cost of cutting ties and the strange freedom that sometimes follows.
Tour Dates
Brown will represent the collection at two upcoming stops. She reads at Books & Books in Coral Gables on Saturday, May 2 and joins contributors Erika Krouse, Anna Qu, and Raksha Vasudevan at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver on Tuesday, May 12. The Denver event will be livestreamed.
Work in Progress
The essay in No Contact connects to work Brinsko is developing outside the anthology. She is currently writing a memoir about caring for her mother, a woman she had been estranged from for 20 years. After her mother moved to Utah, Brinsko worked to rebuild a relationship, only to watch her mother’s memory disappear before any real reconciliation became possible. The memoir sits at the intersection of grief, cultural displacement, and what it means to want something from a person who no longer remembers you.
Brinsko is also shopping a short story collection focused on Caribbean people living in America, tracing the ways they navigate identity, belonging, and the ongoing search for home.
No Contact: Writers on Estrangement
Edited by Jenny Bartoy | Catapult
Published April 28, 2026 | Features essays by Stephanie Foo, Erika Krouse, Deesha Philyaw, Domenica Ruta, Cheryl Strayed, and Soni Brown
Available now wherever books are sold
