"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."--Carl Sagan Poet and baker Kate Lebo takes her cue from Sagan's quote to reinterpret everything we thought we knew about pie. Lebo calls the book "a collection of facts, both real and imagined, about pie." It includes time-proven recipes, an eclectic mix of prose poems, multiple choice, a pie horoscope, and quotes. Lebo explores the tension between the container and the contained while also busting clichés and creating new myths around strawberry rhubarb, vanilla cream, mincemeat, and many other pies. A Commonplace Book of Pie expands on Lebo's successful chapbook of the same name that has two thousand copies in circulation. The book includes two dozen watercolors and illustrations by artist Jessica Lynn Bonin that reinterpret pie and baking in a contemporary, feminist context. Kate Lebo makes poems and pies--often at the same time--in Seattle, Washington.

Her writing has appeared in Best New Poets , AGNI , and Poetry Northwest among other journals, and she's the recipient of a Nelson Bentley Fellowship, a grant from 4Culture, and numerous writing residencies. After earning her MFA from the University of Washington in June 2012, she opened Pie School, her cliche-busting pastry academy. Jessica Lynn Bonin is a painter and illustrator interested in Americana--the artifacts and images of our culture--and how that culture confines and defines us. She lives and works in a former hardware store and lumberyard in Edison, Washington.