The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(118)
A few days later, after my brother and I say goodbye, she has another stroke on board a ship in the Mediterranean. She dies a few hours later. Out in the blue, blue water, under that bright hot sun, singing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are so many people who helped make this book possible.
Thank you to my agent, Ellen Levine, for believing this story was worth telling, and to my brilliant, patient editor at FSG, Jenna Johnson, who pointed out enough bad sentences to make the story worth reading. FSG was my dream press, and the whole team there has been wonderful.
I am lucky, lucky, lucky to have a network of amazing writers and friends in my life who have been invaluable readers. My deep gratitude to my writer crews in Salt Lake City and Tuscaloosa who helped train me toward precision and beauty: Susannah Nevison, Cori Winrock, Noam Dorr, Alex Distler, Catie Crabtree, Laura Bylenok, Sarah Eliza Johnson, Adam Weinstein, Danilo Thomas, Betsy Seymour, Dara Ewing, Jess Richardson, Tom Cotsonas, Kevin Weidner, Annie Agnone, and my sister-friend and bright anchor, AB Gorham. Katie Robertson, Alexis Hyatt, Cricket Kovatch, you loves. Nadja Durbach for reading an early draft. To my dear friend, my first reader, the brilliant rogue cowboy Devin Gribbons: thanks for calling me on my shit.
I wrote most of this book sitting at home in my pajamas and mainlining coffee, but I had the opportunity to attend a few conferences and residencies through generous fellowships that gave me great energy, and to them I am grateful: Writing by Writers at Tomales Bay, the University of Utah’s Taft-Nicholson Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown’s summer session.
I’ve had some extraordinary teachers and mentors who have guided me along the way. First and foremost, my deepest gratitude to Melanie Rae Thon, a lantern through the night, and also to Kellie Wells and Michael Mejia, true guides, and to the splendid Lance Olsen, Wendy Rawlings, Michael Martone, Joel Brouwer, Lidia Yuknavitch, Paul Lisicky, Jerald Walker, and my fifth-grade teacher, Katie Rasmussen, who let me turn in poems for extra credit.
Thank you to all the great storytellers I met along the way, and to some books I found especially helpful for reference: Freaks by Leslie Fiedler, The Arts of Deception by James W. Cook, Struggles and Triumphs by P. T. Barnum, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo by A. W. Stencell, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities by Jan Bondeson, Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, and the great sideshow novel Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.
Dear Family: this book is yours. Thank you for the love and support and ideas about who should play who in the movie. Dad, thanks for having my back and publishing a chapbook of my dramatic yet sincere poems when I was seventeen. Nico, the trick is there is no trick—pure magic. Davy and Sam, thanks for letting me share this joyful, hard, bad-joke-ridden road with you. I’m so much better for it.
And for Jeremy, my adventure partner, thanks for giving me my own great love story.
Dear World of Wonders Crew: I’ll never find the right way to say thanks for letting me be part of your wonderful, weird world for a season. The full story would take a thousand volumes to fill. Chris Christ, Ward Hall, Tommy, Red, Short E, Sunshine, Spif, Pipscy, Cassie, Ben, Hermie, Francine, Rachel, Rash, Snickers—you will forever hold my wonder.
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Want to see a great show? Follow the World of Wonders on Facebook to learn where this carnival season will take them: facebook.com/world.of.wonders.show
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Portions of this book originally appeared, in earlier versions, in the following fine publications:
Hayden’s Ferry Review, 2016: “Dispatch from the Carnival: And the Low Sky Opens” (winner 2016 AWP Intro Journals Award, Nonfiction)
Autre magazine, May 26, 2016: “The Electric Woman”
The Rumpus, December 2015: “Dispatch from the Carnival #5: Instructions for Losing Your Head” (nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2015)
The Rumpus, June 2015: “Dispatch from the Carnival #4: Taking in the Sword” (nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2015)
The Rumpus, April 2014: “Dispatch from the Carnival #3: Bloodlust”
The Rumpus, November 2013: “Dispatch from the Carnival #2: The Snake Charmer”
The Rumpus, July 2013: “Dispatch from the Carnival #1: The Trick Is There Is No Trick”