Two weeks before her grandfather purchased a gun, Ashley Marie Farmer's grandmother tripped as she walked across their living room. It was a swift accident on an ordinary day: her chin hit the floor; her cervical spine shattered. She asked, "I'm paralyzed, aren't I?" Later, thinking to put her out of her misery, he kissed his sleeping wife of sixty-three years and shot her in the chest. He tried to shoot himself too, but the weapon broke apart in his hands. He was immediately arrested. This is the scene we are greeted with at the outset of Farmer's stunning collection of hybrid essays. One of its greatest features is the variety of voices, a kaleidoscopic approach that corrals in autobiography, audio transcripts, media, legal documents, internet comments, short prose pieces, and more. The result is a moving, deeply satisfying, and eye-opening story. Ashley Marie Farmer is a profound writer who is clearly here to stay, her voice a true gift to our times.

"Lyrical and poignant."
-Roxane Gay on "Mercy"

"Poet Farmer (The Women) parses her complicated family history to create a heart-wrenching portrait of love, family, loss, and aging in this astounding collection.....In 'Mercy,' she writes, 'while I'm skeptical of mining beauty from pain... or landing on a diamond takeaway or even claiming good can come from it, I've learned that time-freezing anguish makes for micro-moments of unexpected reverence.' Farmer exceeds her intention; the moments she depicts teem with power. This potent work introduces Farmer as a writer to watch."
-Publishers Weekly starred review

"A slim...but striking book."
-Kirkus Reviews

"Dear Damage plumbs devastating loss, family, grief, gun violence, and love-all with glittering tenderness. Ashley Marie Farmer's mind is vast and complex, and her compassion stuns as she makes 'a quiet study of pain' while acknowledging that 'maybe pain has made a study of me.' These essays leave me aching and awestruck."
-Gina Nutt, author of Night Rooms

"Dear Damage is many things at once: an expertly written collection of literary essays, the riveting story of an unfathomable act of violence, a work of breathtaking empathy, a sublime and generous account of love and grief, and the account of an enormously talented writer's self-creation. Together, they assemble into a book that is somehow all of that and more: a marvel, a reckoning, possibly a miracle."
-Justin St. Germain, author of Son of a Gun

"Prose in the hands of a poet, Dear Damage is 'radiant and unabridged,' a story of love and violence set within the incoherence of American values. Rarely are readers gifted with the work of a mind equally incisive as it is elegant. Ashley Marie Farmer's important Dear Damage speaks to all times from within the salience of our own particular troubled American now."
-Michelle Latiolais, author of She and Widow


Past reviews:

"Whip smart and empathetic...all of it rendered beautifully, the poet's ear and the proser's eye working together to encapsulate and expound."
-Christopher Kennedy, author of Clues From the Animal Kingdom

"Reminiscent of Aimee Bender, Sheila Heti, and Aurelie Sheehan."
-Electric Lit

"The conviction of Lydia Davis...and a linguistic inventiveness equal to that of Diane Williams."
-The Masters Review

"Surreal verve and melancholy tenderness."
-Gina Nutt, author of Night Room

"A highly original work of art."
-The Collagist

"How do we read a book like Beside Myself? Like a gift. We study it from all sides, consider how it feels in our hands, read, consider, then read it again. "
-The Rumpus