On July 15, 2021, musician and writer Kevin Simmonds’ will release his new book, “The Monster I Am Today: Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse.”

Published through TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, the book will chronicle the life and art of the acclaimed opera singer, and its personal influence on Simmonds as a gay, Black artist. Utilizing a structure of “overture, performance, and postlude,” the book’s passages are said to employ a polyphonic movement as it explores themes of Black identity, sound, and history.

Hailing from New Orleans, Simmonds studied music at Vanderbilt University and the University of South Carolina. He has authored two poetry collections, “Mad for Meat” and “Bend to It,” and served as editor for “Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion, and Spirituality,” as well as “Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof.”

As a composer, he wrote the music for the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica,” and “Voices of Haiti: A Post-Quake Odyssey in Verse.”