Juliet Escoria, Author of Juliet the Maniac Book

Escoria, a poet and author of the short-story collection Black Cloud, draws on her own experience for this powerful debut novel chronicling a teenager’s nightmare journey through mental illness. Writing in short bursts that carry the urgency of journal entries, and supplementing the text with drawings, diagnostic records, and other notes, Escoria follows Juliet as she grows increasingly beset by anxiety and hallucinations—conditions she tries to self-medicate with drugs. Sent to one school after another, Juliet at last finds herself in a rural institutional boarding facility where she’s no longer the only one struggling to placate the “foreign thing” in her mind.

Escoria will be in conversation with Amber Sparks, author most recently of The Unfinished World.