Ladies Lazarus
by Piper J. Daniels
Co-winner of the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Awards
Finalist, Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction
Longlist, PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
Nonfiction. Essays. 140 pages. Paperback. 2018
Read excerpts in The Rumpus and Tarpaulin Sky
Equal parts séance, polemic, and love letter, Piper J. Daniels’ Ladies Lazarus examines evangelical upbringing, sexual trauma, queer identity, and mental illness with a raw intensity that moves between venom and grace. Fueled by wanderlust, Daniels travels the country, unearthing the voices of forgotten women. Girls and ghosts speak freely, murdered women serve as mentors, and those who’ve languished in unmarked graves convert their names to psalms. At every turn, Daniels invites the reader to engage, not in the soothing narrative of healing, but in the literal and metaphorical dynamism of death and resurrection.
Ladies Lazarus
by Piper J. Daniels
Co-winner of the 2017 Tarpaulin Sky Press Book Awards
Finalist, Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction
Longlist, PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
Nonfiction. Essays. 140 pages. Paperback. 2018
Read excerpts in The Rumpus and Tarpaulin Sky
“Beautifully written collection of 11 lyric essays…. Daniels emerges as an empowering and noteworthy voice.” (Publishers Weekly) “Piper J. Daniels is going to rip the essay world apart. She’s the kind of writer who buries herself, lives among the dead, then comes to life again to levitate in the stormy air. Ladies Lazarus is the best debut I’ve read in a long time. Daniels has resurrected the personal essay and what it is and what it can do.” (Jenny Boully) “Piper J. Daniels writes, ‘Sometimes the only thing you can do with a feeling is lean into it.’ This is the nervy strategy of her first book, Ladies Lazarus, in which she not only explores her own battle with mental illness and suicidal ideation but also enters into a rich conversation with many other women writers. The result is an extremely intelligent, impressively understated, and achingly powerful work.” (David Shields) “Piper J. Daniels’ Ladies Lazarus is a siren song from planet woman, a love letter from the body, a resistance narrative against the dark.” (Lidia Yuknavitch)
“Beautifully written collection of 11 lyric essays…. Daniels emerges as an empowering and noteworthy voice.” (Publishers Weekly) “Piper J. Daniels is going to rip the essay world apart. She’s the kind of writer who buries herself, lives among the dead, then comes to life again to levitate in the stormy air. Ladies Lazarus is the best debut I’ve read in a long time. Daniels has resurrected the personal essay and what it is and what it can do.” (Jenny Boully) “Piper J. Daniels writes, ‘Sometimes the only thing you can do with a feeling is lean into it.’ This is the nervy strategy of her first book, Ladies Lazarus, in which she not only explores her own battle with mental illness and suicidal ideation but also enters into a rich conversation with many other women writers. The result is an extremely intelligent, impressively understated, and achingly powerful work.” (David Shields) “Piper J. Daniels’ Ladies Lazarus is a siren song from planet woman, a love letter from the body, a resistance narrative against the dark.” (Lidia Yuknavitch)
Piper J. Daniels
Piper J. Daniels is the award-winning author of Ladies Lazarus (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2018). A Michigan native and queer intersectional feminist, Daniels holds a BA from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA from University of Washington and serves as a passionate advocate on issues of mental health, sexual assault, and body positivity. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Hotel Amerika, The Rumpus, Tarpaulin Sky, Longreads, Enclave, The Dirty Spoon, The Monarch Review, and elsewhere. She lives in the American Southwest with her incredible partner, a coven of mischievous puppies, and a very stylish cat.