Christian Livermore is a Pushcart-nominated novelist, essayist and short story writer.
Her debut novel, The Very Special Dead, is out now from Meat for Tea Press!
Her memoir in essays, We Are Not Okay, was published in October 2022.
“A moving meditation on American precarity. If, as Baldwin has written, home is an irrevocable condition, We Are Not Okay argues that the same might be said for poverty. Livermore is sensitive, insightful and provocative and her book is not to be missed.” – Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
We Are Not Okay
Christian Livermore grew up a shy little girl in a turbulent family sunk in poverty, violence, substance abuse and mental illness. She ate government cheese, suffered from malnutrition and struggled to defend her body against threats both outside the house and within it. And even though she made it out, she has suffered a lifetime of consequences since: excruciating health problems, fear and shame. Especially shame. In We Are Not Okay, Livermore's deeply personal and moving essays explore what it means to grow up poor in America and ask whether it is possible to outrun the shame it grinds into your bones. She excoriates the inhumanity in how the United States treats its poor and asks the nation to confront how growing up poor in America brutalizes us and warps our perspective on ourselves, on other people and on the world.
Books
From searing memoir to weird and wonderful novels and stories, these are Christian’s books.
Debut Novel: The Very Special Dead
From Meat for Tea Press
WE ARE NOT OKAY
GIRL, LOST AND FOUND
Events
We Are Not Okay Official Launch
November 19, 2022
Hygienic Art
79 Bank Street, New London, CT
Go and hear Christian read from the book!
“What we essentially want is to draw something unknown to us in all its shadowiness, not something we know in all its illumination.”
Orhan Pamuk