Congratulations to Our 2021 Grace Paley Fellow
You don’t get a review like this every day. According to Kirkus Review, Brittany Means (UTV, 2021), has written “a harrowing and soulful memoir to be read, savored, and reread.”
Means’s first book, Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways, forthcoming in October (Zibby Press), traces her recovery from a traumatic and nomadic childhood via what she calls “a narrative memoir with essayistic elements.” Working on this book, a draft when she attended UTV, was both healing and re-traumatizing along the way.
How does she feel about all the sudden attention? Means has been pleasantly surprised by the starred review from Kirkus and blurbs from authors she admires. She says that she generally finds it challenging to accept positive feedback. However, she is trying to allow it all to sink in. Now that it’s finished, she says “I wrote it the way I hoped I could when I started.”
