All There is to Lose, Aiden Heung

Description

All There Is to Lose by Aiden Heung is a paperback poetry collection that explores memory, grief, and the quiet emotional textures of everyday life. Winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry, selected by acclaimed poet Ilya Kaminsky, this debut collection reveals a voice that is precise, intimate, and deeply observant.

Through understated yet powerful imagery, Heung’s poems linger in the small moments that carry lasting emotional weight: a mother scrubbing the carvings on a headstone, a memory of a father entering a river decades ago, travelers sleeping with their heads on worn bags. Each scene feels spare and carefully composed, allowing emotion to rise gently from the details.

The poems move through time like echoes—reflecting on family, loss, and the strange persistence of memory. In this quiet landscape of reflection, the elegy becomes not only a lament for what has passed, but also a way of briefly bringing the past back to life.

With lyrical precision and emotional restraint, All There Is to Lose offers a moving meditation on how we remember, what we carry forward, and the fleeting moments that shape our lives.

Listing details:
Author: Aiden Heung
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Four Way Books
Publication Date: March 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781961897687

Biographical Note:

Aiden Heung (he/they) is a Chinese poet born in a Tibetan Autonomous town. After working as a traveling salesman for years, he recently relocated to St. Louis, USA. His poems have been published in Australian Poetry Journal, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, 声韵诗刊 (Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine), and many other places. He is a finalist for the DISQUIET Prize, a winner of the International Proverse Poetry Prize, and the recipient of 2025 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, selected by Diane Seuss. He and his work have been generously supported by Varuna, The National Writers’ House (Australia) and Swatch Art Peace Hotel residency (Switzerland/ Shanghai, China). He holds an MFA in creative writing from Washington University.