All In on Empty

About the Book

Recognition, Without Pretending Healing Is Clean

All In on Empty is a raw contemporary poetry collection about reinvention, grief, anxiety, casino life, and the brutal quiet of starting over.

After moving 1,300 miles from everything familiar, Natalie Halloway found herself rebuilding beneath desert skies and casino lights — writing through heartbreak, displacement, exhaustion, and the slow work of becoming someone new.

These poems are not polished reflections written safely from the other side. They are pieces written in the middle of the storm: on sleepless nights, after long shifts, under red desert sunsets, and in the moments when survival had to become a language of its own.

For readers who have ever felt uprooted, heartbroken, unseen, or forced to begin again — this collection offers recognition without pretending healing is clean.

For readers of Amanda Lovelace, Andrea Gibson, and the confessional tradition of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.