Life of the Party: If A Girl Screams, and Other Poems

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Yanked every emotion on the spectrum out of me JAMIE LOFTUS

In this powerful, candid collection, Olivia Gatwood explores the trials and triumphs of growing up as a woman.

She celebrates the teenage girl and the colour pink while questioning the role that fear and male violence play in who we are and what we become. These piercing poems are at times blistering and riotous, and at times soulful and exuberant.

Balancing singularity of view with a sense of universal experience, Life of the Party is about the pain, the joy, the challenge, the reward of being a girl and a woman in todays world.

Olivia Gatwood is a revolution of woman, a flurry of insight harnessing the language of self-assessment and acceptance MAHOGANY L. BROWNE

Asks us to remember the stories of those most vulnerable, the women whose stories are too often ignored THEM.US


An electrifying collection of poems about the agonies and ecstasies of being a young woman LEIGH STEIN

Reviews

Life of the Party is largely a memoir, with memories of friendship as well as violence [It] is also a meditation on Gatwoods obsession with the true crime genre and her long-running fear of male violence. * New York Times *
Life of the Party follows an arc from Gatwoods own adolescence to adulthood... It also asks us to remember the stories of those most vulnerable, the women whose stories are too often ignored. * them.us *
A reaction to, and a guttural cry against, the fear that shapes so many womens lives. A book that is so very many different things: ferocious, melancholic, wistful, joyful, furious. * Culturefly *
I am stirred by the poems in this book it is a sharp, unflinching collection of poems about girlhood, wonder, casual everyday violence. Everything true and disappointing. Memories that we recognize. Everything tragic, stunning, raw. * Yrsa Daley-Ward, author of The Terrible *
Ground-breaking and original poems that candidly face the complications of the female experience, that of negotiating an existence in a world that both excited and terrifies. Gatwood's writing unearths some of my deepest fears as a woman ... These poems cautious, direct, brave made me face uncomfortable truths, like all great poetry should. * Elaine Feeney, author of How to Build a Boat *

Author Bio

Olivia Gatwood is the author of two poetry collections, New American Best Friend and Life of the Party. Her debut novel, Whoever You Are, Honey, was released in 2024, which she will also adapt for the screen. She has received international recognition for her poetry, writing workshops, and work as a Title IX Compliant educator in sexual assault prevention and recovery. Her performances have been featured on HBO, HuffPost, MTV, VH1, and the BBC, and more. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Foundation, Sundance Film Festival, Lambda Literary, and The Missouri Review. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she lives in California.