She Was Wild Grass

by Katie Bennett

A groundbreaking hybrid memoir, She Was Wild Grass deftly intertwines Bennett’s own artistic coming-of-age with the haunting story of Joan Vollmer, the remarkable yet overlooked figure of the Beat Generation whose life was tragically cut short when her husband, William S. Burroughs, shot her in 1951.

Braiding past and present, Bennett explores art, ambition, gender, and freedom, asking what it means to create in a world where women’s stories are so often silenced and forgotten. At once intimate and unflinching, it brings Vollmer out from the shadows of literary history while charting the risks and revelations of Bennett’s own search for an artistic path.

For readers of Kate Zambreno, Maggie Nelson, and Nathalie Léger, She Was Wild Grass offers an unflinching meditation on art, history, and self-discovery.

224 pages, Paperback

Expected publication September 1, 2026

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend this new book by Katie Bennett which dignifies the life and death of Joan Vollmer, the fascinating & flawed woman who was married to William Burroughs and was ultimately murdered by him. The book also dignifies Katie’s own story of becoming. It feels amazing to read women give other women, and themselves, their due. I ate this up in 2 days. Just stunning. And a debut!

Preorder link: https://www.brinkliterary.com/product...

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This bracing braided memoir—in the tradition of Kate Zambreno’s Heroines—tracks the author’s artistic evolution alongside her research into the fascinating yet tragic life of Joan Vollmer. Bennett attempts to excavate Vollmer from her scantily recorded history to reveal her as an influential artist of the Beat movement, for which her husband and murderer William Burroughs would be remembered. In this book, Bennett makes a compelling argument that the archivist’s duty is to dust off tired, surface-level assignations of creative influence and material output to reveal counterhistories that bear a much closer semblance to the truth. I found the straight memoiristic parts of the book somewhat lacking the guttural vulnerability Bennett sees and imagines into Vollmer’s life, but overall this is a promising feminist work from an artist-researcher who hails from Out of Academia. Amen to that.

[Hannah Bonner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes me want to recommit to being a writer again and again and again. Truly breathtaking.

[Claire Askew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal. Review to come!

[Katie Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it!