Heather Christle

'In a memoir that pulses with feeling and intelligence, [Christle] excavates the past to expose difficult truths' GuardianWhen Heather Christle realises that she, her mother, and Virginia Woolf share a traumatic history, she begins to rewrite and intertwine each of their stories, in search of a more hopeful narrative and a future she can live with. During a rare moment of vulnerability, Christle's mother shares a memory of assault as a child growing up in London. This instant of shock and recognition sends Christle down a rabbit hole into her mother's past. From Kew Gardens to the British Library and Bloomsbury, Christle's journey takes her deep into her family mythologies and her own buried memories. All the while, she finds that Virginia Woolf and her writings not only seem to connect and overlap with her mother's story, but also that Woolf becomes a kind of vital intermediary: a sometimes confidante, sometimes mentor, sometimes distancing lens through which Christle can safely observe her mother and their experiences. In the Rhododendrons is part memoir, part biography of Virginia Woolf, part reckoning with the things we cannot change and the ways we can completely transform, if we dare. This utterly original book will stir readers into new ways of seeing their own lives. 'Heartbreaking, revelatory, exquisite, and ultimately ecstatic, this book is a gift' Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers

''[Heather Christle is] among the small handful of authors whose books I reflexively, half-consciously reach toward whenever I need inspiration, consolation, delight. Nobody thinks like her'' Kaveh Akbar, Electric Literature''This is a stunning book'' Jericho BrownPaper Crown is Heather Christle''s first new collection of poems in over a decade. Throughout these exhuberant poems, Christle conjures moments when the world''s events - a child''s words, early twentieth-century predictions of drone warfare, dinners with friends - alight themselves with the odd logic of dreams and serendipity.WIth tenderness and verse, honesty and curiosity, Paper Crown invites readers to look up from its pages and recognise that the day going on around them could very well be its own poem. MistakeFor years I have seendead animals on the highwayand grieved for them only to realize they arenot dead animalsthey are t shirtsor bits of blown tireand I have foundmyself with thisexcess of griefI have made with no object to letit spill over andI have not knownwhere to put it orkeep it and then todayI thought I knowI can give it to you

''IN THE RHODODENDRONS is vital consolation, amidst the amidst. It''s a triumph, an instant classic. Christle has become one of our art''s most urgent living practitioners'' Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!When Heather Christle realises that she, her mother, and Virginia Woolf share a traumatic history, she begins to rewrite and intertwine each of their stories, in search of a more hopeful narrative and a future she can live with.When Heather Christle realises that she, her mother, and Virginia Woolf share a traumatic history, she begins to rewrite and intertwine each of their stories, in search of a more hopeful narrative and a future she can live with.On a recent visit to London''s Kew Gardens, Christle''s mother revealed details of a painful story from her past that took place there, under circumstances that strangely paralleled Heather''s own sexual assault during a visit to London as a teenager.Her private, British mother''s revelation - a rare burst of vulnerability in their strained relationship - propels Christle down a deep and destabilising rabbit hole of investigation, as she both reads and wanders the streets of her mother''s past, peeling back the layers of family mythologies, England''s sanctioned historical narratives, and her own buried memories. Over the course of several trips to London, with and without her mother, she visits her family''s ''birthday hill'' in Kew Gardens, the now-public homes of the Bloomsbury set, the archives of the British Library, and the backyard garden where Woolf wrote her final sentence. All the while, she finds that Woolf and her writings not only constantly seem to connect and overlap with her mother''s story, but also that the author becomes a kind of vital intermediary: a sometimes confidante, sometimes mentor, sometimes distancing lens through which Christle can safely observe her mother and their experiences.Wide-ranging and prismatic, the fruit of an insatiably curious, delightfully brilliant mind, In the Rhododendrons is part memoir, part biography of Virginia Woolf, part reckoning with the things we cannot change and the ways we can completely transform, if we dare. This utterly original book will stir readers into new ways of seeing their own lives.