My Most Anticipated Memoirs of Spring 2024
Explorations in friendship, fluidity, modern Buddhism, and more
I started this quarterly roundup of soon-to-be published memoirs as a thank you to paid subscribers. If there’s a memoir you’re looking forward to this season, drop it in the comments and I’ll do my best to check it out. Happy reading!
This is my third and most difficult yet list of forthcoming memoirs to compile. When taking into account memoir, personal essay, and autobiographical poetry, I started with an unwieldy list of 29 titles. What I love about offering this whittled down list of 18 titles to paid subscribers is that you have an opportunity to influence my reading and review choices.
Last quarter,
commented that they were interested in Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt: A Memoir in Verse by Brontez Purnell. Consequently, I prioritized that title in my requests to publishers. I ended up intrigued by this book myself and included a mini review in last month’s post here.This quarter, the “7 Memoirs I Can’t Wait to Read” are books that appeal to me for reasons of personal interest, exposure to stories and people who are different than me, or because I hope they’ll be instructive for my own writing practice. The “11 More Memoirs on My Radar” are exactly that: titles I’m keeping an eye on and may choose to read as time permits and subscriber interest demands. So without further ado, I give you my most anticipated memoirs of spring 2024.
7 Memoirs I Can’t Wait to Read
1. Shift: A Memoir of Identity and Other Illusions, by Penny Guisinger
Pub Date: March 2024
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
I cannot emphasize enough how much I loved this book. This was my first exposure to Penny Guisinger’s writing, which reminds me of the way
writes. She spends less time on telling the reader the surface events of her life (marrying a man and later falling in love with a woman) and focuses more on using metaphor and detail to evoke curiosity and feeling. I’ll be doing a full review of this on March 5.
2. My Withered Legs and Other Essays, by Sandra Gail Lambert
Pub Date: March 2024
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
With the added lens of queerness and disability,
shares potent insights into the necessity of caregiving between parent and child and even romantic partners. I so enjoyed this collection of personal essays on love, nature, aging, creativity, activism, and more. A full review of this fellow Floridian’s book will also come out March 5.