Awkward

Startlingly imaginative nonfiction about a very particular if common and much-maligned state of being.

Los Angeles Times Bestseller

“Mary Cappello[’s] inventive, associative taxonomy of discomfort . . . [is] revelatory indeed.” —MARK DOTY, author ofDog Years: A Memoir andFire to Fire: New and Selected Poems

“A wonderful, multi-layered piece of writing, with all the insight of great cultural criticism and all the emotional pull of memoir. A fascinating book.” —SARAH WATERS, author ofThe Night Watch andThe Little Stranger

Without awkwardness we would not know grace, stability, or balance. Yet no one before Mary Cappello has turned such a penetrating gaze on this misunderstood condition. Fearlessly exploring the ambiguous borders of identity, she mines her own life journeys—from Russia, to Italy, to the far corners of her heart and the depths of a literary or cinematic text—to decipher the powerful messages that awkwardness can transmit.

Mary Cappello is the author of four books of literary nonfiction, includingAwkward: A Detour, which was aLos Angeles Times bestsellerCalled Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life, which won aForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award and an Independent Publishers Prize, andSwallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them. Professor of English at the University of Rhode Island, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island and Lucerne-in-Maine, Maine.