LUNATICS' BALL ACCEPTED!

AMAZING NEWS that I’ve known since Thanksgiving, but the acceptance had to clear a university press committee, the holidays intervened, and I wanted to wait until I had a signed contract. It’s official. I signed the contract yesterday.

(In the interim, the manuscript was also named one of twelve finalists for another really great book prize, winner to be announced in the spring. I just withdrew it, but I appreciated the added vote of confidence.)

My book THE LUNATICS’ BALL has been named first runner up for the Gournay Prize and will be published in 2027 by Mad Creek Books (the literary imprint of The Ohio State University Press) in their prestigious 21st Century Essays series. 
 
I am so grateful to the prize judges and series editors Kristen Elias Rowley, David Lazar, and Patrick Madden. I've already had a long Zoom call with Kristen, who will be editing the manuscript, and I love knowing the book will be in her capable hands. (Deadline for edits and permissions, April 1.) I'm grateful to all of the writers who supported the project, and in many cases, critiqued essays as I assembled the book, And to all the editors who accepted individual essays for publication.
 
Still catching my breath.
 
On the 21st Century Essay series:
"This series from Mad Creek Books is a vehicle to discover, publish, and promote some of the most daring, ingenious, and artistic nonfiction. This is the first and only major series that announces its focus on the essay—a genre whose plasticity, timelessness, popularity, and centrality to nonfiction writing make it especially important in the field of nonfiction literature. … The series is a major addition to the possibilities of contemporary literary nonfiction, focusing on that central, frequently chimerical, and invariably supple form: The Essay."
 
This is my dream publisher and series! They’ve published some of my favorite essayists. I already own many of their collections .
 
On my collection. 
My genre-bending essay collection The Lunatics’ Ball explores my two bipolar breakdowns and my bipolar aunt’s suicide within the expanded context of female lunatics in past centuries and the history of the treatment of mental illness in women.

I'll post more about the collection on my Substack, this week and in the coming months.