News
JackLeg Press Spring Poetry Series on 26 March 2024
I’m so excited to be reading in the JackLeg Press Spring Poetry Series on Tuesday, March 26th at 7 p.m. ET. I’ll be reading with my dear friend Mamie Morgan, whose extraordinary collection, Everyone I’ve Danced With Is Dead, is out from JackLeg Press in March of 2024, and with Karen Rigby, whose beautiful book Fabulosa comes out with JackLeg in June of 2024, as well as the amazing Angie Estes, author of Parole. Click here for more information about JackLeg Press‘ reading series and to sign up for tickets on Eventbrite.
Emma Bolden Will Appear in Sick Lit, an Endometriosis Literary Series, on 11 December 2023
I’m proud to announce that I’ll be participating in a conversation as part of Sick Lit: An Endometriosis Literary Series at 1:00 EST/12:00 CST on Monday, December 11th, 2023. Sick Lit features conversations with five authors who’ve written about their experience with endometriosis. The Series is part of the In/Visible Endometriosis: Menstruation, Menopause and Narrative Medicine project at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care at the University of Graz, Austria, and is sponsored by the Elisabeth-List-Fellowship-Program. Click here for more information and to RSVP for the Series!
Poem Featured on Verse Daily
“Theism,” originally published in the Sugar House Review, was featured on Verse Daily.
A Conversation with Erin Slaughter on The Lives of Writers Podcast from Autofocus
In this episode of The Lives of Writers podcast, guest host Erin Slaughter talks with Emma Bolden about leaving academia, editing for The Screen Door Review, writing across genre, asexuality, the South,The Tiger and the Cage, fractal form, embodied trauma, endometriosis, and more.
A Conversation with Sophie Jane Hardy of The Red School on the Menstruality Podcast
“Emma’s memoir, The Tiger and The Cage, exploring her decades-long rollercoaster with endometriosis was recently featured by the brilliant production company, Shondaland who describe her as a ‘compelling voice‘ and her book as: ‘an outstretched hand inviting us to accompany her through the most intimate and important experiences of her life, and women’s collective experiences.’”
— Sophie Jane Hardy, The Red School‘s Menstruality Podcast
Listen to Sophie Jane Hardy’s conversation with Emma Bolden on the Menstruality podcast from The Red School.
The Tiger and the Cage Recommended in The Guardian
“Interweaving vivid glimpses of her life from puberty to present day with medical-history vignettes, [Bolden] examines the nature of her aggressive endometriosis, the dire side effects of prescribed treatments, and the roots of institutional misogyny in western medicine that still hamper diagnosis and treatment today.”
The Tiger and the Cage was recommended in a round-up of “Top 10 Medical Memoirs … by Patients” in The Guardian.
Review in The Believer
“Henry and William had a younger sister: Alice James was, like Bolden, besieged by mysterious pain throughout her life. She was at one point diagnosed with hysteria and urged to see Dr. Charcot in France. It seems she never went, though she and her doctors continued to perplex one another, and the experience took its inevitable mental toll: “I went down to the deep sea,” she wrote of one summer spent in depression; decades later, Bolden would remark that her experience felt, at times, “like drowning.” The symmetry is startling. If language cannot yield precision, perhaps it grants something else: across the decades, a furtive and hard-earned fellowship.”
— Zoe Hu, The Believer
Read “A Review of The Tiger and the Cage” by Zoe Hu in the comeback issue of The Believer.
Interview in Hazlitt
“’Because we’ve been taught that our stories, that the blood and fear and vomit and pain inside our stories, are unspeakable,’ writes Emma Bolden, ‘some of us don’t speak about them at all.’ The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis (Soft Skull Press)—her first work of prose following several poetry collections—is a resounding testament to the power of putting words to the experiences rendered opaque by society at large.”
— Emma R. Cohen, Hazlitt
Read “‘The Inexplicable Facets of Living in a Human Body’: An Interview with Emma Bolden,” Emma R. Cohen’s interview with Emma Bolden about The Tiger and the Cage, in Hazlitt.
Emily Van Duyne on Bearing Witness and The Tiger and the Cage
“Emma Bolden and I were born in the same year, and we have the same name (she decided in high school to begin going by Emma). We’ve had similar educational and professional trajectories—BFA, MFA, tenure-track. So I read many of the scenes in her newest book with a wondrous and terrible recognition, having lived through my own version of big hair and big black smudged eyes like the girl on the cover of Hole’s Live Through This, lived through insomniac repeat playings of “Hey, Jupiter” on my Discman until I fell into a merciful sleep.”
(from Emily Van Duyne’s “Choosing to Bear Witness”)
Read “Choosing to Bear Witness: Writing the Story of a Body,” Emily Van Duyne’s essay in conversation with The Tiger and the Cage, at LitHub.
Essay in Catapult magazine
“Going through puberty as an asexual person often felt like I was playing a board game and everyone had the instructions but me. And going through adulthood as an asexual person—especially as an unmarried, childless woman in the Deep South—made me realize that my peers and I were actually playing entirely different games.”
Read Emma Bolden’s essay, “Finding My Asexual Identity in My Thirties,” in Catapult magazine.
Interview on Salon
“An intimate, eloquent personal history of survival and self-discovery . . . One of the most riveting and accessible accounts of the experience of pain you’ll read all year.” —Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon
Read Mary Elizabeth Williams’ interview with Emma Bolden, “‘I was 13 when doctors started telling me to have a baby’: A real-life tale of medical trauma,” on Salon.
Interview on Electric Lit
“For any reader ever cast as the unreliable narrator of their own story, I suspect Bolden’s memoir will feel like fierce, validating balm.” — Wynter K. Miller, Electric Literature
Read Wynter K. Miller’s interview with Emma Bolden, “How Do You Escape If Your Body Is the Prison?“, on the Electric Literature website.
The Tiger and the Cage in Poets and Writers magazine
The Tiger and the Cage was featured in Poets and Writers magazine’s “Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin” for November/December 2022. To see the feature, click here. To hear me read a selection from The Tiger and the Cage, click here.
Profile/Interview on Shondaland
“Bolden’s memoir digs into the layers of sociocultural beliefs around menstruation, fertility, the expectations of women’s role to mate and procreate, and the indivisible links between sexuality, psychological security, desire, and self-awareness.” —Cat Woods, Shondaland
Read all of Cat Woods’ “Emma Bolden Rediscovers Herself Amid Her Battle With Endometriosis in The Tiger and the Cage” on the Shondaland website.
The Tiger and the Cage Reviewed in Kirkus
“[Bolden’s] lyrical descriptions and emotional honesty render this harrowing story hard to put down, and her critique of the medical establishment is both sharp and fair . . . A well-written, deeply researched, and searingly frank memoir about reproductive health.” —Kirkus Reviews
See what else Kirkus says about The Tiger and the Cage.
The Tiger and The Cage Reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly
“Dark and riveting . . . [It] stings as much as it astounds.” — Publisher’s Weekly
See what Publisher’s Weekly had to say about The Tiger and the Cage, out in October 2022 from Soft Skull Press.
New Poems in Interim
Read “The Exiled Speaks” and “girlblooded” in Interim.
New Poem in the Southern Indiana Review
“The Beautiful and Glorious,” from the Spring 2022 issue of the Southern Indiana Review, is featured as a Ruth Awad Poetry Pick on the SIR website.
New Poem in Defunct Magazine
Read “Convalescence” in Defunct Magazine.
New Poem in SWWIM
Read “Coming of Age” in SWWIM Every Day.
New Poem in Just Place
Read “After the Anthropocene” in Just Place
Events
March 16th, 2023, 6:30 CT: A Hundred Pitchers of Honey Celebrates Let Me Say This:
I’ll be reading in celebration of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology , edited by Julie E. Bloemeke and Dustin Brookshire, with A Hundred Pitchers of Honey over Zoom. Click this link to register!
April 15th-16th, 2023: Red Clay Writers Conference
I’ll be offering a craft talk at this year’s Red Clay Writers Conference, sponsored by the Georgia Writers Association and held at Kennesaw State University. More information soon!
January 14th, 2023, 12pm – 2 pm ET: Breaking the Block: How Playing by the Rules Can Get You Back into the Game with Georgia Writers. More information can be found on their website.
Join me for a generative writing workshop about discovering ways to create through writers block. All you need is a poem that you’re stuck on! For more information and to RSVP, click here.
November 1st, 2022, 7:30 PM ET/6:30 PM CT: Virtual Event at Greenlight Bookstore in conversation with Angela Chen. More information can be found here.
For more information, visit Greenlight Bookstore’s website here.
You can register for the event here.
To buy The Tiger and the Cage from Greenlight, click here.
October 12th, 2022, 8:00 PM CT: Virtual Event: Chelsea Martin and Emma Bolden Present Their Latest Releases, Tell Me I’m an Artist and The Tiger and the Cage, at Book Soup. More information can be found here.
October 18th, 2022, 7:00 PM CT: Book Launch at Thank You Books in Birmingham, AL. More information can be found here.
Can’t make it to the launch but would still like a signed and personalized copy? You can order one from Thank You Books here. Just specify in the notes that you’d like a signed book.
Emma Bolden 