In 2017, Cassandra and Paul Hetherington signed an advance contract with Princeton University Press to write a book on prose poetry, which was published in 2020.

Atherton's prose poetry explores the reanimation of canonical texts against a backdrop of popular culture references.

Michael Farrell writes: "Cassandra Atherton’s nervy style is distinct from an earlier generation of prose poets (Joanne Burns, Gary Catalano, Ania Walwicz); it feels both post-punk and post-John Forbes.

'"[28] While Atherton's prose poetry is informed by previous poets and investigates the anxiety of the artist, Ivy Ireland has observed dark humour in her collection of prose poetry, Exhumed: "Dazzling, vibrant and terribly witty, ... Exhumed does not give itself over entirely to the horribly serious, gruesome images invoked by its title.

"[29] Australian writer Kerryn Goldsworthy notes in a critique of Atherton's Trace (2015) that "The dense, intense prose is often funny, and incorporates all kinds of cultural allusions.

"[30] "It seems that for Atherton experience can excavate uncanny resonances; for this writer-as-reader, the canon perhaps acts as a repository of thematic models, patterns, and ideals as if a searchable archive reconstituted in this book in a mode Majorie Perloff terms elsewhere (and in other contexts) as récriture.

If these texts are indeed expressions of desire, as [Lisa] Gorton asserts, then here is a poet ventriloquizing a pantheon of archetypes in order to extend fragmentarily and formally into narrative, her catharses presented as participatory and multi-vocal prose-like inventions".

She was awarded a VicArts Grant (2016)[31] to collaborate on writing a prose poetry graphic novel with Day and scholar/poet Alyson Miller, titled Pika-don.