“In her self-assured debut collection To Wildness, Julia Thacker vividly brings to life the family and fast-vanishing Appalachian culture that formed her …  It’s not too great a leap to imagine this poet ‘setting fire’ to her past—America is, after all, a country of reinvention. So many of us set those fires, only to search for our identity in the ash. With To Wildness Julia Thacker celebrates the flames and the ash.”

—Carla Sarett, New Verse Review