I know it’s been said before, but these carefully crafted poems really do sing---and vibrate and beg to be heard aloud. Shane Manier has managed in this concise volume to tell whole vivid stories that value the overlooked among us. Her words are powerful and imbued with the sorrow and joy that often governs our American nights.~Tim Peeler

The Fallen Heroes of the Awful Waffle is the Spoon River Anthology of the Waffle House. Shane Manier beautifully captures the grit and vitality of that iconic 24 hour temple of the dispossessed and yearning, where the hungry trek for sustenance beyond mere bodily nourishment. With abiding compassion and a clairvoyant eye that peers deeply into the very core of her subjects, Manier dishes up searing unforgettable language, language to be reckoned with, and equally unforgettable characters, blazing with desire and humanity, hunched over plates as if eating last meals. This is a powerful book. ~Joseph Bathanti, NC Poet Laureate (2012-2014)

I have spent most of my adult life on the road, so the ubiquitous Waffle House is a sacred station of the Cross for me, the only hot meal for hundreds of miles. Shane Manier's wonderfully descriptive poems are equipped with jack-in-the-box characters that pop fully formed off the page, and she treats her charges tenderly and fairly in these narratives. She has a keen fluidity and grace for a young poet, and her sentences have my mouth watering even now for a fresh conversation and some hash browns buttered, smothered and covered. ~Keith Flynn, author of Colony Collapse Disorder,  and editor of The Asheville Poetry Review