‘Yanked every emotion on the spectrum out of me’ JAMIE LOFTUS

In this powerful, candid collection, Olivia Gatwood explores the trials and triumphs of growing up as a woman.

She celebrates the teenage girl and the colour pink while questioning the role that fear and male violence play in who we are and what we become. These piercing poems are at times blistering and riotous, and at times soulful and exuberant.

Balancing singularity of view with a sense of universal experience, Life of the Party is about the pain, the joy, the challenge, the reward of being a girl and a woman in today’s world.

‘Olivia Gatwood is a revolution of woman, a flurry of insight harnessing the language of self-assessment and acceptance’ MAHOGANY L. BROWNE

‘Asks us to remember the stories of those most vulnerable, the women whose stories are too often ignored’ THEM.US


‘An electrifying collection of poems about the agonies and ecstasies of being a young woman’ LEIGH STEIN

Life of the Party is largely a memoir, with memories of friendship as well as violence… [It] is also a meditation on Gatwood’s obsession with the true crime genre and her long-running fear of male violence. * New York Times *
Life of the Party follows an arc from Gatwood’s own adolescence to adulthood... It also asks us to remember the stories of those most vulnerable, the women whose stories are too often ignored. * them.us *
A reaction to, and a guttural cry against, the fear that shapes so many women’s lives. A book that is so very many different things: ferocious, melancholic, wistful, joyful, furious. * Culturefly *
I am stirred by the poems in this book – it is a sharp, unflinching collection of poems about girlhood, wonder, casual everyday violence. Everything true – and disappointing. Memories that we recognize. Everything tragic, stunning, raw. * Yrsa Daley-Ward, author of The Terrible *
Ground-breaking and original poems that candidly face the complications of the female experience, that of negotiating an existence in a world that both excited and terrifies. Gatwood's writing unearths some of my deepest fears as a woman ... These poems – cautious, direct, brave – made me face uncomfortable truths, like all great poetry should. * Elaine Feeney, author of How to Build a Boat *
Olivia writes about the women who were forgotten and the men who got off too easy with an empathy and anger that yanked every emotion on the spectrum out of me. Her words can ‘make a crop top out of anything,’ and make you laugh, cry, and walk around the block three times, thinking ‘How did she do that?’ Imagine our luck, getting to live in the age of Olivia Gatwood. Goddamn. * Jamie Loftus *
Life of the Party is an electrifying collection of poems about the agonies and ecstasies of being a young woman. * Leigh Stein *
Olivia Gatwood is a revolution of woman, a flurry of insight harnessing the language of self-assessment and acceptance. Her poems invite a contemporary understanding of sexuality and the feminine form, feminism and inclusion, intersection and advocacy. Her metaphors and images are both breath and being. This book is an offering to the silenced for firepower and reflection. A haystack of hallelujahs reside in these pages. * Mahogany L. Browne *

Olivia Gatwood is the author of two poetry collections, New American Best Friend and Life of the Party. Her debut novel, Whoever You Are, Honey, was released in 2024, which she will also adapt for the screen. She has received international recognition for her poetry, writing workshops, and work as a Title IX Compliant educator in sexual assault prevention and recovery. Her performances have been featured on HBO, HuffPost, MTV, VH1, and the BBC, and more. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Foundation, Sundance Film Festival, Lambda Literary, and The Missouri Review. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she lives in California.