- Graywolf Press
Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams won this year’s Graywolf Press prize in nonfiction, and it’s so good it almost makes me forgive Graywolf for bankrolling* yet another dull James Franco “poetry” project. Tonight at 7 pm, Jamison is reading at Literary Arts (925 SW Washington) with music from Timmy Straw, as part of Late Night Library‘s reading series. If you haven’t read The Empathy Exams, you can start here—the title essay, which covers Jamison’s time as a “medical actor” for future doctors to practice their compassion on, is free to read over at the Believer (side note for book nerds: did you hear that McSweeney’s is now a 501(c)3?!). It’s one of the best essays I’ve read this year. Here’s an excerpt:
We SPs are given our own suite for preparation and decompression. We gather in clusters: old men in crinkling blue robes, MFA graduates in boots too cool for our paper gowns, local teenagers in ponchos and sweatpants. We help each other strap pillows around our waists. We hand off infant dolls. Little pneumatic Baby Doug, swaddled in a cheap cotton blanket, is passed from girl to girl like a relay baton. Our ranks are full of community-theater actors and undergrad drama majors seeking stages, high-school kids earning booze money, retired folks with spare time. I am a writer, which is to say: I’m trying not to be broke.
Read the whole thing here.
*This is a (sad) joke. If small presses had the resources to truly bankroll anything, they wouldn’t need to publish James Franco. #sorrynotsorry