JESSICA FILION
Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction, Edited by: Sabrina Chapadjiev
“Are you an artist? Do you struggle with mental health challenges? Then this is a must read. This book found me when I was in dark place, and made me feel like I had people with me who understood. “ - Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SABRINA CHAPADJIEV is a playwright, spoken word artist, and singer-songwriter originally from the suburbs of Chicago. She is founder of the all-woman songwriter series Chicks that Kick, and editor of the zine Cliterature: 18 Interviews with Women Writers. Her plays, including perhaps merely quiet, have been produced in the United States and Europe.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
“Are you looking for a summer read? This book has a little bit of everything: friendship, a sense of adventure, drama, and romance. All while exploring who gets to be Mexican, what does coming out look like, and the impacts of violence. This book had me fully immersed when I had a long day of travel. I ignored the flight attendant’s request for my attention through sobs.” - Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Benjamin Alire Sáenz is an author of poetry and prose for adults and teens. He is the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the American Book Award for his books for adults. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe was a Printz Honor Book, the Stonewall Award winner, the Pura Belpre Award winner, the Lambda Literary Award winner, and a finalist for the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award. His first novel for teens, Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood, was an ALA Top Ten Book for Young Adults and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second book for teens, He Forgot to Say Goodbye, won the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, the Southwest Book Award, and was named a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. He teaches creative writing at the University of Texas, El Paso.
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
“Kiese Laymon is a master at the craft of writing. This book carried me through so many emotions, and the exquisite writing kept me coming back again and again.” - Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Kiese Laymon, Ottilie Schillig Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi, is the author of the novel Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. He is also the author of the memoir Heavy.
The Chronology of Water: A Memoir by Lydia Yuknavitch
“From the first page Yuknavitch takes your breath away. To say this book moved me to tears is an understatement. This book deals with loss, addiction, and the world of writing. It is harrowing, engrossing, and really well written.” - Jessica Filion
DESCRIPTION
This is not your mother's memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.
Sing, Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward
“Ward’s writing is completely immersive. I was instantly transported to the South grounded in Black culture. Her characters move you to care about them and the writing allows you deep glimpses of their lives.” - Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, and the Strauss Living Prize. She is the winner of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing(2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.
Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
“Dear Sugar pulls no punches. Strayed will tell it like it is, but also offer deep compassion when the letters require it. This book has offered me so many quotes, and so much light to focus on, as well as, a loving wake up slap when I needed it.” - Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHERYL STRAYED is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0 and became an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon;Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, a national best seller now the basis of the WBUR podcast Dear Sugar Radio, co-hosted with Steve Almond; and Torch, her debut novel. Her books have been translated into forty languages, and her essays and other writings have appeared in numerous publications.
All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater
“Have you ever wondered what shapes miracles would take? Stiefvater’s work takes you to a place that is nothing like what you would imagine a miracle to look like. Set in the West there is an every-dayness about the magic in this book that keeps you reading.” - Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maggie Stiefvater is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Shiver, Linger, Forever, and Sinner. Her novel The Scorpio Races was named a Michael L. Printz Honor Book by the American Library Association. The first book in The Raven Cycle, The Raven Boys, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and the second book, The Dream Thieves, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. The third book, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, received five starred reviews. The final book, The Raven King, received four. Her latest book is All the Crooked Saints. She is also an artist and musician. She lives in Virginia with her husband and their two children.
Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros
“This collection from Cisneros has given me so much permission for my own writing. The stories are varied and self-contained, yet they feel as part of the same world. When I read this for the first time (forever ago), I finally found myself in a book.” - Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, the Texas Medal of the Arts, a MacArthur Fellowship, several honorary doctorates and national and international book awards, including Chicago’s Fifth Star Award, the PEN Center USA Literary Award, and the National Medal of the Arts awarded to her by President Obama in 2016. Most recently, she received the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized among The Frederick Douglass 200, and was awarded the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
Meaty by Samantha Irby
“Samantha Irby is hilarious. Her wit is sharp and cutting and everything I needed for some LOLs. Her writing is so real and true , and she deals with a host of issues all while making you laugh.” -Jessica Filion
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samantha Irby writes a blog called bitches gotta eat.