Unbound Edition Press today announced it will publish Christian Bancroft’s debut book of poetry, A Ghost Has No Fantasies. The poems in this collection derive from found texts regarding the persecution of queer men and women before, during, and after the Holocaust. The title is scheduled for publication on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January of 2026.
Through haunting poetry and prose, A Ghost Has No Fantasies illuminates the forgotten voices of LGBTQ+ people who suffered under Nazi persecution. Drawing from archival documents, survivor testimonies, and Gestapo files, Bancroft weaves together the intimate stories of those imprisoned under Paragraph 175 and beyond — gay men, lesbians, and transgender people whose experiences have long remained in the shadows of Holocaust memory. At a time when LGBTQ+ rights remain under threat globally, this collection serves as both memorial and warning — a testament to the resilience of human love against the machinery of hate-fueled erasure.
Christian Bancroft earned his Ph.D. from the University of Houston and is the recipient of a Michener Fellowship. He is also the author of Queering Modernist Translation: The Poetics of Race, Gender, and Queerness (2020) and the co-editor of the 2018 Unsung Masters Series volume, Adelaide Crapsey: The Life & Work of an American Master. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, Petrichor, and Asymptote, among others.
Kevin Prufer, the celebrated poet, novelist, and critic, has said of the book, “Christian Bancroft has produced a kaleidoscopic work of docupoetics, vast in its scope and historical vision, one that draws our attention at last to the intimate voices of individuals otherwise lost in a time that would obliterate them. Brilliant, inventive, and deeply moving.”
Peter Campion, executive editor at Unbound Edition Press, acquired A Ghost Has No Fantasies for the house, and is editing the work with Bancroft. He writes: “Christian Bancroft’s A Ghost Has No Fantasies treats the horror of genocide with the enduring resources of imagination, compassion, and intense verbal skill. Here is a book of tremendous ethical conviction and aesthetic originality.”
Patrick Davis, publisher and editor in chief at Unbound Edition Press, said, “Christian’s book is among the rarest of things: poetry that resurrects, honors, and heals people lost to the deepest of tragedies. There is no book like this one, and we are beyond privileged to publish it.”
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