About this item
Highlights
- "If Nick Flynn's Stay is a self-portrait, it is a self-portrait of our planet, of our contemporary consciousness in an undeniably wounded era.
- About the Author: Nick Flynn has worked as a ship's captain, an electrician, and a caseworker for homeless adults.
- 320 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Literary Figures
- Series Name: ZE
Description
About the Book
Known for his bestselling memoirs and as an acclaimed poet, Nick Flynn in Stay presents a self-portrait via a constellation of topics that the author has circled--or have circled him--in his work: suicide, homelessness, addiction, political engagement, artistic friendships.
Book Synopsis
"If Nick Flynn's Stay is a self-portrait, it is a self-portrait of our planet, of our contemporary consciousness in an undeniably wounded era. I think of it as an artist's notebook, a prayer book, a monumental compendium of what it means to stay alive." -Mary Ruefle
With Stay, acclaimed poet, artist, and bestselling memoirist Nick Flynn presents a self-portrait via a constellation of topics that have circled his work. Ranging from the impact of suicide and homelessness to addiction, political engagement, and the vital power of artistic friendships, Stay is a mixed-media retrospective that shows nothing is created in isolation.
Mirroring Flynn's life, this work of visual and literary memoir is populated by examples of his collaborations since the 1980s with such luminaries as the photographers Amy Arbus and Catherine Opie, composer Guy Barash, actor Robert De Niro, cartoonist Josh Neufeld, author Sarah Sentilles, filmmaker Paul Weitz, and artists John Baldessari, Marilyn Minter, and Bill Shuck. In Flynn's refusal to conform to narrative or the safety of his own perspective, Stay grasps for an essential truth, an answer to what art, in the end, can and cannot reflect.
Review Quotes
"Stay [is] a kaleidoscopic self-portrait that combines Massachusetts native Flynn's writing, photography, and collage with visual art from dozens of collaborators and influences and friends."--Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe
"Over the course of a year, [Flynn] will have released three books...Stay feels like the glue that brings them all together."--Licia Morelli, Vanity Fair
"Personally, this book came to me when I needed it and detangled some of the loose threads balled up in my mind. This book is a self-portrait, a collaboration, and a piece of art. This book is essential." --Ali Hintz, Arkansas International
"One of the pleasures of a book like Stay is its ability (rather, its capacity) to surprise...That's the beautiful thing about a book like Stay: the juxtaposition, the play between art forms, and how it allows room for experience, opens up space to sit and feel." --Brock Kingsley, Chicago Review of Books
About the Author
Nick Flynn has worked as a ship's captain, an electrician, and a caseworker for homeless adults. Some of the venues his poems, essays, and nonfiction have appeared in include the New Yorker, the Nation, the Paris Review, the New York Times Book Review, and NPR's This American Life. His writing has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, PEN, and the Fine Arts Work Center, among other organizations. His film credits include artistic collaborator and "field poet" on Darwin's Nightmare (nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006), as well as executive producer and artistic collaborator on Being Flynn, the film version of his memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. His most recent collection of poetry, I Will Destroy You, appeared from Graywolf Press in 2019. He is part of the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston, where each spring he teaches workshops in poetry, creative nonfiction, and interdisciplinary art. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Lili Taylor, and his daughter, Maeve. His work has been translated into fifteen languages. www.nickflynn.org