Life of the Party : Poems

176 pages | Paperback

i’m a good girl, bad girl, sad girl, dream girl

girl next door sunbathing in the driveway

i wanna be them all at once, i wanna be

all the girls I’ve ever loved

—From Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood is a thrilling new feminist voice.

In Life of the Party, Gatwood weaves together her own coming of age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. Her precise, searing language—at times blistering and rioutous, at times soulful and exuberant—explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. Gatwood asks, How does one grow from a girl to a woman in a world wracked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim?

A dazzling debut collection of raw and explosive poems about growing up in a sexist, sensationalized world, Life of the Party illustrates that what happens to our bodies makes us who we are.