Otherwise

by Julie Marie Wade

 A personal lyrical essay collection by a winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir.
 
“I am a butterfly at half-mast. Muscles coiled like springs. I have not unwound yet,” writes Julie Marie Wade in Otherwise . In this series of intimate, braided essays written throughout her 30s, Wade traces her own unwinding and becoming through probing lyricism. As a daughter, lover, lesbian, and writer, she invites readers on a journey of self-discovery framed by memory, literature, and popular culture. Touching and tender, empathic and insightful, Otherwise revels in its author's self-acceptance at the threshold of mid-life.
 

Genres: LGBT, Essays

176 pages, Paperback

Published October 16, 2023

About the author

Born in Seattle in 1979, Julie Marie Wade completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012. She has received the Chicago Literary Award in Poetry (2004), the Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize (2004), the Oscar Wilde Poetry Prize (2005), the Literal Latte Nonfiction Award (2006), two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes (2006, 2010), the AWP Intro Journals Award for Nonfiction (2009), the American Literary Review Nonfiction Prize (2010), the Arts & Letters Nonfiction Prize (2010), an Al Smith Artist Grant from the Kentucky Arts Council (2010), the Thomas J. Hruska Nonfiction Prize (2011), the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir (2011), the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize (2012), a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund (2012), and seven Pushcart Prize nominations. Julie is the author of two collections of lyric nonfiction, Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010) and Small Fires (Sarabande Books, 2011); two collections of poetry, Without (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Postage Due (White Pine Press, 2013); the creative nonfiction chapbook Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Press, 2013); and the forthcoming When I Was Straight: Poems (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2014). She lives with her partner Angie Griffin in the Sunshine State and teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami.

Reviews

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for #BookBingoNW2024, LGBTQIA+ Poetry or Essays. I suppose I should give a disclaimer that Julie was a good friend of mine in college and there is a certain delight in reading a book by someone you know so you hear the words in their voice and thus I might be biased. But no, screw that. I think this is objectively a beautifully-written book. I started marking lines I loved with Post-its, something I haven't done in years, and reading passages aloud to my spouse. If you are doing Book Bingo and you can't decide whether to read poems or prose for this category, I highly recommend this collection of lyrical essays that scratches both itches. (And if you are wondering what the difference is between poetry and prose, there's an essay that ponders that very question!)

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but a bit predictable. Some of the wordplay and exploration of lesbian identity seemed labored to me, since my background is the lesbian feminist poetry and prose of the 70s where Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde and others laid the groundwork for this type of theorizing. But I'm glad Wade's book is here for younger lesbians to discover.

[Julianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading these braided essays.