Arena Glow was the winner in the Poetry (Non-Fiction) category in the 2025 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author Angela Chaidez Vincent.
“Thank you for your attentive reading and review of Arena Glow. Glowing with the good news of such a warm reception.”
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Arena Glow was published June 4, 2024. It’s almost the one year Arenaversary!
What’s the book’s first line?
“One night, years before I was born, / my father shivered by the highway / with a pistol in his coat.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Arena Glow sings the women of the arena: the rodeo arena, the cockpit of a small plane, the boys’ club of engineering, the confines of a murderous board game, the Colosseum in which women also desired to fight as gladiators, the traditional marriage. Exploring themes of danger versus security, belonging and not, the limits of moxie, power that grows across time and experience, and coming out in mid-life and mid-marriage, the poems range in tone from unflinching grit to awed sweetness as they trace the trajectories and life spans of women born with a daredevil oblique.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
Years ago, I read a snotty line by the Roman satirist Juvenal that really pissed me off: “What a sight, if they auctioned off the wives’ paraphernalia, / The sword-belts, arm-protectors, crests, and the half-size / Left leg shin guards!” He was making fun of the women, specifically the nieces and daughters of Roman senators, that wanted to leave the confines and traditional roles of the home to instead enter the arena as gladiators themselves. As the child of a rodeo mom whose shin guards I dearly loved, I started brewing my book-length retort.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Despite this being a collection of narrative poems, there is not necessarily a main character. The voices of this book form more of a chorus of brave women in multiple arenas: from the women of rodeo, to the imagined inner lives of the murder-mansion-bound women of the board game Clue, to the women who suffered (and sublimated) from very real blows to their bodies and to their sense of self.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
If you enjoy narrative poems featuring bad-ass women, lyricism in language, formal variety, strange inventiveness, humor, and an indomitable spirit, you will enjoy this book.
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
I deeply admire Karen Russell. Her wild imagination and ambition is matched only by the depth and poignancy of her observations.
Which book do you wish you could have written?
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. This book continues to astound me on each reading. I especially love his idea of taking all the warring parts of himself and making each of them into fully formed willful characters.