Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life

Through a collection of personal essays, poet provocateur Kim Addonizio chronicles the joys and indignities in the life of a writer coasting through middle age. She vividly captures moments of inspiration at the writing desk (or bed) and adventures on the road, from sparsely attended readings at small Midwestern colleges to wine-fuelled one-night stands at publishing conferences. Addonizio s crackling wit and colorful prose bring unforgettable life to pieces like How to Fall for a Younger Man and Necrophilia (her term for an attraction to men who are dead inside). She turns a tender yet still comic eye to her family especially her mother, a former tennis champion forced to struggle through Parkinson's at the end of her life, and the daughter she raised mostly alone, who at a young age chanced upon an article Addonizio had written for Penthouse.Taking its impish title from a snarky remark by an NBCC judge some years ago a barbed epithet that Addonizio found herself rather liking BUKOWSKI IN A SUNDRESS is a captivating memoir, at once intimate and outrageous, that radiates all the wit and heartbreak and ever-sexy grittiness that her readers have come to love.