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.