My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

A moving record of love at the margins.—The New Yorker

The kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it.—The New York Times Book Review

Positively breathtaking.—Forbes

Revelatory.—O, The Oprah Magazine

Stimulating . . . part fan letter, part detective story, and part steely corrective.—The New York Review of Books

My Autobiography Of Carson McCullers asks sharp questions not just about the details of McCullers’ life but, more broadly, how we understand historical figures who confound the social expectations of their time (and our own) and how, in turn, they can help us understand ourselves. —NPR

A succinct, thought-provoking exploration of women’s sexuality and the language that has been used to describe and limit our desires throughout history.—GOOP

A fascinating and intimate examination of the work of archives, research and historic preservation as well as the arc of identity and social construction. . . . [an] idiosyncratic and entirely winning book.—Observer

A beautiful consideration of the nature of proof, and of self and identity and queerness and history and progress.—Vox

This book uncovers ways women’s queer history has been ignored. It’s a personal, powerful, genre-bending account of literary discovery.—Book Riot, “Best Books of 2020”

Gorgeous, symphonic, tender, and brilliant.—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In The Dream House

Lucid, distilled, and honest.—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

You do not need to be a queer woman, a lover of Carson McCuller’s fiction, or interested in the mysterious junctures between our own lives and those of our favorite artists to love this book, but for those of us who are those things, Jenn Shapland’s memoir is a particular trove of delights. My favorite biographies are full of historical literary gossip and interested in the shadow selves of public persons. My favorite memoirs are those that scrutinize the self as an unreliable source of narrative truth and the one we must nonetheless rely upon. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers manages to do all of this in earnest and honest and riveting vignettes. It is a detective story and a dissection of selfhood, a puzzle every piece of which pleased me as it clicked into place. —Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood

Remarkable. . . . A biography that’s also a memoir, a story of obsession and longing.—R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

A gorgeous, brilliant book.—Electric Literature

Following along with Shapland-as-detective is a delight, and the mystery she sets out to solve is one of those wicked unsolvables: how do we account for the apertures in language, history, and identity?—The Los Angeles Review of Books

An intriguing, genre-blending debut.—Chicago Tribune

Mind-bending!—Emma Straub, Books Are Magic

A beautifully written and hard-to-categorize meditation on Carson McCullers and the hidden literary history of queer women.—Literary Hub

A mystery, a love story, a biography, several hearts on the page—I so loved this generous offering.—Molly Moore, BookPeople

A treatise on seeing yourself in someone else.—Bustle

An exquisitely rendered map of discovery—of an icon, and of a self.—Lambda Literary

This book will change the way you think about the truth.—Autostraddle

Shapland brings a sharp modern lens to her reading of McCullers’ (and her own) life.—A.V. Club

Two books in one: an examination of a famous author whose narrative has been posthumously taken away from her, but also a vital memoir of Shapland’s own experience as a queer woman looking for stories about people like her.—Harper’s BAZAAR

Sensational.—Star Tribune

Shapland herself has made a major contribution to the genre of autobiography.—The Phi Beta Kappa Society

A truly brilliant approach to biography. Bold, brave and fascinating.—The Charlotte Observer