Bukowski in a Sundress : Confessions from a Writing Life

?Somewhere between Jo Ann Beard?s The Boys of My Youth and Amy Schumer?s stand-up exists Kim Addonizio?s style of storytelling . . . at once biting and vulnerable, nostalgic without ever veering off into sentimentality.? ?Refinery29?Always vital, clever, and seductive, Addonizio is a secular Anne Lamott, a spiritual aunt to Lena Dunham.? ?BooklistA dazzling, edgy, laugh-out-loud memoir from the award-winning poet and novelist that reflects on writing, drinking, dating, and more   Kim Addonizio is used to being exposed. As a writer of provocative poems and stories, she has encountered success along with snark: one critic dismissed her as ?Charles Bukowski in a sundress.? (?Why not Walt Whitman in a sparkly tutu?? she muses.) Now, in this utterly original memoir in essays, she opens up to chronicle the joys and indignities in the life of a writer wandering through middle age.                Addonizio vividly captures moments of inspiration at the writing desk (or bed) and adventures on the road?from a champagne-and-vodka-fueled one-night stand at a writing conference to sparsely attended readings at remote Midwestern colleges. Her crackling, unfiltered wit brings colorful life to pieces like ?What Writers Do All Day,? ?How to Fall for a Younger Man,? and ?Necrophilia? (that is, sexual attraction to men who are dead inside). And she turns a tender yet still comic eye to her family: her father, who sparked her love of poetry; her mother, a former tennis champion who struggled through Parkinson?s at the end of her life; and her daughter, who at a young age chanced upon some erotica she had written for Penthouse.   At once intimate and outrageous, Addonizio?s memoir radiates all the wit and heartbreak and ever-sexy grittiness that her fans have come to love?and that new readers will not soon forget.