Archives de catégorie : Memoir

FRIGHTEN THE HORSES d’Oliver Radclyffe

For fans of Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There and Thomas Page McBee, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES is a textured and sharply written queer memoir about coming of age in the fourth decade of one’s life and embracing one’s truest self in a world that wants to fit everyone in neat boxes.

FRIGHTEN THE HORSES
by Oliver Radclyffe
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, September 2024

From the outside, Oliver Radclyffe spent four decades living an immensely privileged, beautifully composed life. As the daughter of two well-to-do British parents and the wife of a handsome, successful man from an equally privileged family, Oliver played the parts expected of him. He checked off every box—marriage, children (four), a white-picket fence surrounding a stately home in Connecticut, and a golden retriever named Biscuit.

But beneath the shiny veneer, Oliver was desperately trying to stay afloat as he struggled to maintain a façade of normalcy—his hair was falling out in large clumps, he couldn’t eat, and his mood swings often brought him to tears. And then, on an otherwise unremarkable afternoon in September, Oliver Radclyffe woke up and realized the life of a trapped housewife was not one he was ever meant to live. In fact, Oliver had spent his entire life denying the deepest, truest parts of himself. In the wake of this realization, he began the challenging, messy journey toward self-acceptance and living a truer life, knowing he risked the life he’d built to do so.

The journey is fraught, as Oliver navigated leaving a marriage and reintroducing himself to his children. And despite the challenges he faced, Oliver realizes there was no way for him to go back to the beautiful lie of his previous life. Not if he wanted to survive. FRIGHTEN THE HORSES is a trans man’s coming of age story, about a housewife who comes out as lesbian and tentatively, at first, steps into the world of queerness. With growing courage and the support of his newfound community, Oliver is finally able to face the question of his gender identity and become the man he is supposed to be. The story of a flawed, fascinating, gorgeously queer man, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES introduces Oliver Radclyffe as a witty, arresting, unforgettable voice.

Oliver Radclyffe is part of the new wave of transgender writers unafraid to address the complex nuances of transition, examining the places where gender identity, sexual orientation, feminist allegiance, social class, and family history overlap. His work has appeared in The New York Times and Electric Literature, and he has a book of essays due for publication in October 2023 with Unbound Edition Press. He currently lives on the Connecticut coast, where he is raising his four children.

BEING HENRY de Henry Winkler

From Emmy-award winning actor, author, comedian, producer, and director Henry Winkler, a deeply thoughtful memoir of the lifelong effects of stardom and the struggle to become whole.

BEING HENRY
The Fonz . . . and Beyond
by Henry Winkler
Celadon Books, November 2023

Henry Winkler, launched into prominence as “The Fonz” in the beloved Happy Days, has transcended the role that made him who he is. Brilliant, funny, and widely-regarded as the nicest man in Hollywood (though he would be the first to tell you that it’s simply not the case, he’s really just grateful to be here), Henry shares in this achingly vulnerable memoir the disheartening truth of his childhood, the difficulties of a life with severe dyslexia, the pressures of a role that takes on a life of its own, and the path forward once your wildest dream seems behind you.

Since the glorious era of Happy Days fame, Henry has endeared himself to a new generation with roles in such adored shows as Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, and Barry, where he’s been revealed as an actor with immense depth and pathos, a departure from the period of his life when he was so distinctly typecast as The Fonz, he could hardly find work.

Filled with profound heart, charm, and self-deprecating humor, BEING HENRY is a memoir about so much more than a life in Hollywood and the curse of stardom. It is a meaningful testament to the power of sharing truth and kindness and of finding fulfillment within yourself.

“Smart and entertaining.” —New York Times

“[An] inspirational story of one of Hollywood’s most beloved figures who became an unlikely TV screen icon and later a champion for those with dyslexia.” —Associated Press

“You want to brew him some tea, pat his arm. His tender memoir isn’t explicitly dishy. It’s an excavation of his challenges, pain and neuroses.” —Washington Post

In 2023, Henry Winkler celebrates 50 years of success in Hollywood and continues to be in demand as an actor, producer, and director. He co-stars as acting teacher Gene Cousineau on the hit HBO dark comedy, Barry. For this role, he won his first Primetime Emmy Award in 2018 for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy as well as two Television Critics Choice Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, he was cast in 1973 in the iconic role of Arthur Fonzarelli, aka “The Fonz,” in the TV series Happy Days. During his 10 years on the popular sitcom, he won two Golden Globe Awards, was nominated three times for an Emmy Award and was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In recent years, Winkler appeared in a number of series, including Medical Police, Arrested Development, Children’s Hospital, Royal Pains, New Girl, and Parks and Recreation. He is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous children’s books, including Alien Superstar, A Trilogy and Hank Zipzer the World’s Greatest Under-Achiever, a 28-book series inspired by Winkler’s own struggle with learning challenges. Of all the titles he has received, the ones he relishes most are husband, father and grandfather. Winkler and his wife, Stacey, have three children, Jed, Zoe and Max, and six grandchildren. They reside in Los Angeles with their two dogs.

THE CAVE d’Amani Ballour

Written in the tradition of I Am Malala and based on the Oscar-nominated documentary The Cave, this searing memoir tells the inspiring story of a young doctor and activist who ran an underground hospital in Damascus, illuminating and humanizing the enduring crisis in Syria.

THE CAVE
A Secret Underground Hospital and One Woman’s Story of Survival in Syria
by Amani Ballour, M.D.
National Geographic, March 2024
(via Kaplan/DeFiore)

Simply put, there is no one in Syria with a story like Dr. Amani Ballour. The only woman to have ever run a wartime hospital, she saved her peers from the atrocities of war while contending with the patriarchal conservatism around her.

Growing up in Assad’s Syria, Dr. Ballour knew she wanted to be more than a housewife, even as her siblings were married off in their teens. As the revolution unfolded, she volunteered at a local clinic and was immediately thrown into the deep end of emergency medicine. Here, she found her voice and the courage to continue.

Among the facets of this powerful tale: Becoming a hospital director. Shielding children from a horrific sarin attack. Losing colleagues. Starvation during the hospital siege. Attempting to employ more women in the hospital and challenging the patriarchy. Abandoning the hospital. Becoming a refugee. Living with trauma. Moving forward.

Amani Ballour is a role model and a game changer who, like Malala Yousafzai, will be remembered as one of history’s great heroines. She is an incredibly brave, passionately committed young humanitarian who, though deeply wounded by her experiences, is not content to quietly deal with her own trauma. Instead, Ballour is determined to seek justice and to do her utmost to ensure that others will not have to face the horrors that she survived.

Amani Ballour graduated from the University of Damascus in 2012. She began her pediatrics specialization before abandoning her studies to help the people of her hometown, under attack from the Assad regime, in an underground medical facility known as The Cave. In 2018, as Assad’s forces closed in, Ballour was forcibly displaced to northern Syria before settling in the United States with her husband in 2021. She is the recipient of the Council of Europe’s prestigious Raoul Wallenberg Prize. She lives in Patterson, New Jersey.

Rania Abouzeid is a multi-award-winning Lebanese-Australian journalist who has reported from across the Middle East for some two decades. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Time magazine, National Geographic, and other outlets. She lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

RABBIT HEART de Kristine S. Ervin

Told fearlessly and poetically, Rabbit Heart weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation: our stories do not need to be simple to be true, and there is power in the telling.

RABBIT HEART
A Mother’s Murder, A Daughter’s Story
by Kristine S. Ervin
Counterpoint Press, Spring 2024
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Kristine Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in a nearby oil field. In the shadow of that incomprehensible act, first there was grief. Then, the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last, terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life. As more information about her mother’s death comes to light, Kristine’s drive to know her mother only intensifies and winds its way into her own fraught adolescence. In the process of both, Kristine butts up against contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be—a self outside of the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim—what a “true” victim is supposed to look like, how complicated and elusive justice really is, and how we are meant to accept what cannot/should not be accepted.

“Kristine S. Ervin writes, in her deeply moving memoir, RABBIT HEART, ‘I don’t want to choose the lazy form of grief.’ And throughout each nuanced essay-chapter, the reader bears witness as she doesn’t. We watch our speaker encounter grief, examine grief, and ultimately transform abiding grief into abiding art. RABBIT HEART is an elegy to a lost mother, yes. It is also a profound meditation on patience, on healing, and a bildungsroman that carries us unforgettably into the speaker’s—and her family’s— bittersweet beyond. When Ervin states, ‘Some stories are unsayable,’ she is right. So, she doesn’t say; instead, she lyrically documents and viscerally embodies her survival.” —Julie Marie Wade, author of Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing and Otherwise: Essays

Kristine S. Ervin grew up in a small suburb of Oklahoma City and now teaches creative writing at West Chester University, outside of Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature, with a focus in nonfiction, from the University of Houston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Brevity, and Passages North, and her essay “Cleaving To” was named a notable essay in the 2013 edition of Best American Essays. An excerpt from RABBIT HEART appeared in CrimeReads.

POETS SQUARE de Courtney Gustafson

Beautifully written literary nonfiction about animals with a profound core like H Is for Hawk and Fox and I. Structured in smart, snappy personal essays that probe at the problems of personhood in the internet age, it will appeal to fans of Melissa Broder or Jia Tolentino, and its introspective, generous thinking on self and society evokes Wintering.

POETS SQUARE:
Essays on Cats & Community
by Courtney Gustafson
Crown, 2024
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

When Courtney Gustafson moved into a new rental in the Poets Square neighborhood in Tuscon, Arizona, she would never have guessed that a colony of feral cats living in her driveway would change her life forever. Settling into a secure romantic relationship while it felt like the world around her was burning down, she couldn’t know how reluctantly, then profoundly, she would come to care about the health and safety of those thirty-some-odd neglected cats: Beebs, Lola, Sadboy, Goldie, Dr. Big Butt, Reverse Monkey, Rihanna, and so many more.
She had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem. And she couldn’t have imagined how that struggle—towards an ethics of care, of individuals trying their best amidst spectacularly failing systems—would help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled with much of her life. She also didn’t expect that the TikTok and Instagram accounts she created about the cats would end up with a just shy of a combined million followers.
POETS SQUARE is a memoir-in-essays about becoming an accidental cat rescuer, going viral, creating community, and surviving capitalism. These essays tell the brutal and tender stories of cats Courtney has saved (or failed to save) as a lens to explore everything from poverty and mental health to morality and misogyny. We see how cat rescue—despite its often-enormous sadness—paradoxically helped in a struggle with depression, showing the way towards an interrelated community of cats and care. The book explores caretaking and kindness in the face of a broken system: what it means for an individual to refuse to throw their hands up, to insist on showing up regardless of insurmountable problems, to search for ways to be a good person in the face of crushing overwhelm.

Courtney Gustafson is the creator of @PoetsSquareCats on TikTok (918k) and Instagram (61k). Her cats and rescue work have been featured on The Dodo, Newsweek, Best Friends Animal Society Magazine, and elsewhere. Before she had thirty cats, she completed a masters degree and PhD coursework in rhetoric and composition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where her interests included community literacies and literacy within incarcerated populations. She taught first-year writing at UMass before leaving academia to work in nonprofit communications. Most recently she’s worked for a large regional food bank, managing social media strategy, storytelling, fundraising, and crisis communications. She has continued to teach creative writing and adult basic literacy as a volunteer in prisons and in refugee communities in Tucson, Arizona, and volunteers as a mentor to incarcerated writers with PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in Lady Science, Word Riot, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere.