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Biography: general
A genre-defying examination of identity, queerness and love in the vein of Maggie Nelson's Argonauts
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
'Fascinating and intimate' OBSERVER
'Lucid, distilled, honest' MAGGIE NELSON
'Gorgeous, symphonic, tender' CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol - alongside your own?
Jenn Shapland's celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America's most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory and love. Interweaving her own story with McCullers', Shapland shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.
'A moving record of love at the margins' NEW YORKER
'A call to arms to reappraise past lives' THE TIMES
Praise for My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
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A hard-won inquiry into how we seek out the truth of ourselves and others in ways that often, by necessity, aren't straightforward, that arrive in our lives in glimmering bits and shards . . . Shapland's book is the kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it - New York Times Book Review
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An unpretentious, moving record of love at the margins
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Following along with Shapland-as-detective is a delight, and the mystery she sets out to solve is one of those wicked unsolvables: how do we account for the apertures in language, history and identity? - Los Angeles Review of Books
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Gorgeous, symphonic, tender and brilliant
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In lucid, distilled, honest prose, Jenn Shapland teaches us about McCullers, the desire for recognition, loneliness, the complexities of queer history, the seductions and resistances of the archive and, all throughout, love
Jenn Shapland
Jenn Shapland is a writer and archivist living in New Mexico. Her first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Lambda Literary award. Her essays have won a Pushcart Prize, a Rabkin Foundation Award for art journalism, and a Howard Foundation Fellowship. She has a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently writing a collection of essays called Thin Skin.
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