Through these powerful and insightful essays, David Olimpio explores the residual effects of sexual abuse, divorce, and grief. With surprising candor and a disarming sense of humor, Olimpio takes on the outwardly wholesome landscape of his suburban Houston childhood and the complex sexual relationships in his adult life. Both poignant and poetic, This Is Not a Confession leaves us with a sense that our identities have the power to transcend our circumstances.
"Jenny Williamson's Collection of Flaws in a Black Dress is haunting and inspiring, full of ghosts who remind us all what is at stake when we begin to fall in love, and yet this collection goes beyond simple loss. In Williamson's poems, desire and mourning transform the lover into sea creature and prehistoric beast, allowing the uncanny to take root and multiply into strange, seductive doppelgangers. Williamson's gorgeous debut shows how even the deepest grief can emanate diaphanous glory, giving birth to cities and unearthly moons. It is a collection to savor." -- Nancy Hightower, author of The Acolyte
Edgar W., teenage dropout, unrequited lover, unrecognized genius - and dead - tells the story of his brief, spectacular life. It is the story of how he rebels against the petty rules of communist East Germany to live in an abandoned summer house, with just a tape recorder and a battered copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther for company. Absurd, funny and touching, this cult German bestseller, now in a new translation, is both a satire on life in the GDR and a hymn to youthful freedom.