Deep Vellum Books is excited to host Chelsey Clammer in a reading of her compassionate and reflective collection of essays, Circadian.
About the Book
Winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award, Circadian is a collection of essays that weaves together personal account with cultural narrative, only to unravel them and explore the brilliant and destructive cycles of who we are. Using poetic language and lyric structures, Clammer dives into her stories of trauma, mental illnesses, and a wide spectrum of relationships in order to understand experience through different of frameworks of thought. Whether it’s turning to mathematics to try to solve the problem of an alcoholic father, the history of naming to look at sexism, weather to re-consider trauma, or even grammar as a way to question identity, these “facts” move beyond metaphor, and become new ways to narrate our cyclical ways of being.
“I have never read an interrogation of language, gender politics, or aftermath quite like Clammer's passionately searing Circadian. Though evocative of writers from Anne Carson to Kate Zambreno, Clammer’s urgency and electricity here create a flash of lightning all her own.”―Gina Frangello, author of A Life of Men and Every Kind of Wanting
“In these beautifully written essays, Clammer considers the intricate, confounding, and powerful connections between story and body, narrative and physical form. She examines the subject of trauma through a series of innovative frames, casting a fearless and curious gaze on her material and bringing new insights to life.”―Marya Hornbacher, New York Times bestselling author of Wasted (Pulitzer Prize finalist)
About the Author
Chelsey Clammer is the author of BodyHome and winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award for her essay collection, Circadian. She has been published in The Rumpus, Hobart, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Normal School and Black Warrior Review among others. She is the Essays Editor for The Nervous Breakdown and teaches creative writing online with WOW! Women on Writing. Chelsey received her MFA from Rainier Writing Workshop. www.chelseyclammer.com.