Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays

Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay 

With the virtuosic synthesis of memoir, criticism, & journalism for which Leslie Jamison has been so widely acclaimed, the 14 essays in Make It Scream, Make It Burn explore the oceanic depths of longing & the reverberations of obsession. Among Jamison's subjects are 52 Blue, deemed "the loneliest whale in the world"; the eerie past-life memories of children; the devoted citizens of an online world called Second Life; the haunted landscape of the Sri Lankan Civil War; & an entire museum dedicated to the relics of broken relationships. Jamison follows these examinations to more personal reckonings - with elusive men & ruptured romances, with marriage & maternity - in essays about eloping in Las Vegas, becoming a stepmother, & giving birth. 

Often compared to Joan Didion & Susan Sontag, & widely considered one of the defining voices of her generation, Jamison interrogates her own life with the same nuance & rigour she brings to her subjects. The result is a provocative reminder of the joy & sustenance that can be found in the unlikeliest of circumstances. 

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Leslie Jamison is the author of the essay collection The Empathy Exams, a NY Times bestseller, & the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, & her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, the New York Times Book Review, the Oxford American, & the Virginia Quarterly Review. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University & lives in Brooklyn with her husband.