Winner of the 2019 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

‘I must find my own complicated junkie to have violent sex with. In 1994, nothing seemed like a better idea, save being able to write about it later.’

Michelle Tea is our exuberant, witty guide to the hard times and wild creativity of queer life in America. Along the way she reclaims SCUM Manifesto author Valerie Solanas as an absurdist, remembers the lives and deaths of the lesbian motorbike gang HAGS, and listens to activists at a trans protest camp. This kaleidoscope of love and adventure also makes room for a defence of pigeons and a tale of teenage goths hustling for tips at an ice creamery in a ‘grimy, busted city called Chelsea’. Unsparing but unwaveringly kind, Michelle Tea reveals herself and others in unexpected and heartbreaking ways.

Against Memoir is the winner of the 2019 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Best known as writer of fiction and memoir, this is the first time Tea’s journalism has been collected. Delivered with her signature candour and dark humour, Against Memoir solidifies her place as one of the leading queer writers of our time.

Prizes

Winner of 2019 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay 2019

‘Tea’s writing continues to make the world worth living in.’

‘Tea’s conversational tone and her way of writing deeply personal experience appeal to a certain universal that is also countercultural, subversive, and presents a very necessary counter-narrative to mainstream histories of American punk, feminism, and sexual identity.’

Michelle Tea is the author of a number of books, including memoirs. Her most recent novel Black Wave, was published in the UK by And Other Stories in 2017. A literary organiser in queer and feminist circles, she co-created the long-running performance tour Sister Spit and founded RADAR Productions, a non-profit whose projects include Drag Queen Story Hour.