Notes from a Swing State

By Zoe Brigley

These creative nonfiction essays consider girlhood, motherhood, violence at home and abroad, violence against women, the consolation in writing, trauma, and redemption.

The essays celebrate and interrogate popular and literary culture: for example the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Alun Lewis’s love letters, and David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’.

These timely meditations on women, ethics, and writing bring insights that only an immigrant and traveller like Brigley could provide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Parthian Books
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912681617

Zoe Brigley

Zoë Brigley is the author of three books of poetry published by Bloodaxe: Hand & Skull (2019), Conquest (2012), and The Secret (2007). All three are UK Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She also has a collection of nonfiction essays: Notes from a Swing State: Writing from Wales and America (Parthian, 2019). Her writing appears in Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, The Chicago Review, Australian Book Review, PN Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. She also researches literature, film, trauma, and violence against women and minorities. She co-edited the academic volume Feminism, Literature, and Rape Narratives (with Sorcha Gunne). Her research articles appear in The Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Formations, Feminist Media Studies, Gender and Education, and Contemporary Women’s Writing. She podcasts on anti-violence advocacy issues at SinisterMyth.com . She won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, and she was listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 35. A native of Wales, she now lives in Ohio, where she works as an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University. She is a contributing editor and committee member for Wales’ leading poetry journal, Poetry Wales.