This is a book about ownership. It begins with an essay about being given a man's furniture while he's on trial for murder and follows with essays that question corporeal, familial, and intellectual forms of ownership. What does it mean to believe that a hand, or a child, or a country, or a story belongs to you? What happens if you realize you're wrong? Mining her own life and those of others, Sarah Viren considers the contingencies of ownership alongside the realities of loss in this debut essay collection.
Winner of the 2020 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Creative Non-fiction
Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
2019 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Silver Winner for Essays in 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards

This is a book about ownership. It begins with an essay about being given a man's furniture while he's on trial for murder and follows with essays that question corporeal, familial, and intellectual forms of ownership. What does it mean to believe that a hand, or a child, or a country, or a story belongs to you? What happens if you realize you're wrong? Mining her own life and those of others, Sarah Viren considers the contingencies of ownership alongside the realities of loss in this debut essay collection.
Winner of the 2020 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Creative Non-fiction
Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
2019 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Silver Winner for Essays in 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards

This is a book about ownership. It begins with an essay about being given a man's furniture while he's on trial for murder and follows with essays that question corporeal, familial, and intellectual forms of ownership. What does it mean to believe that a hand, or a child, or a country, or a story belongs to you? What happens if you realize you're wrong? Mining her own life and those of others, Sarah Viren considers the contingencies of ownership alongside the realities of loss in this debut essay collection.
Winner of the 2020 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Creative Non-fiction
Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
2019 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Silver Winner for Essays in 2018 Foreword INDIE