Getting one's first period is a rite of passage, but one's last period? Most women don't know it at the time. Novelist Ellis Avery marks this unusual milestone in an essay about undergoing a hysterectomy at the age of 39 after being diagnosed with a rare uterine cancer. A wrenching account of Avery's attempt to keep an ovary - and with it the semblance of life before cancer - GOODBYE, RUBY offers a fond and funny farewell to a quarter-century of menstruation. Of course it's also about beauty, fertility, aging, sex, the author's mother, Hilary Mantel, and Michelle Tea. The third of three essays selected from a forthcoming memoir on grief, illness, and food entitled THE FAMILY TOOTH. To learn more about THE FAMILY TOOTH, please visit ellisavery.com.
Ellis Avery writes from the depths of loss and fear with emotional precision and visceral sensuality. But foremost it's her ability to attain a graceful, benevolent perspective on it all that makes these essays soar.
--Alison Bechdel
Ellis Avery uses her novelist's powers to tell the true story of her life in crisis. She faces her mother's death and her own near-death with an artist's intelligence and imagination--and humor. Reading these essays brings tears of grief and laughter.
--Maxine Hong Kingston
Ellis Avery captures the stillness and the drama of everyday life with elegance and poetry, never shying away from the struggles that make us human.
--Michelle Tea
About the Author: The only writer ever to have received the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Fiction twice, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her novels, THE LAST NUDE (Riverhead 2012) and THE TEAHOUSE FIRE (Riverhead 2006) have also received Lambda, Ohioana, and Golden Crown awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. Avery edits an urban observations column for Public Books, works one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant, and teaches fiction writing at Columbia University. www.ellisavery.com
Cover design by Kerry Ellis.
Ellis Avery writes from the depths of loss and fear with emotional precision and visceral sensuality. But foremost it's her ability to attain a graceful, benevolent perspective on it all that makes these essays soar.
--Alison Bechdel
Ellis Avery uses her novelist's powers to tell the true story of her life in crisis. She faces her mother's death and her own near-death with an artist's intelligence and imagination--and humor. Reading these essays brings tears of grief and laughter.
--Maxine Hong Kingston
Ellis Avery captures the stillness and the drama of everyday life with elegance and poetry, never shying away from the struggles that make us human.
--Michelle Tea
About the Author: The only writer ever to have received the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Fiction twice, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels, a memoir, and a book of poetry. Her novels, THE LAST NUDE (Riverhead 2012) and THE TEAHOUSE FIRE (Riverhead 2006) have also received Lambda, Ohioana, and Golden Crown awards, and her work has been translated into six languages. Avery edits an urban observations column for Public Books, works one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant, and teaches fiction writing at Columbia University. www.ellisavery.com
Cover design by Kerry Ellis.
Used availability for Ellis Avery's Goodbye, Ruby