Author Biography

Madison Davis (she/her) is a writer and editor based in Oakland, California. She is the author of Disaster (Timeless, Infinite Light; Nightboat, 2016) and The Loved Ones (Dzanc Books, forthcoming 2023.) Madison's work can also be found in a few magazines and anthologies and many more files on her computer. Madison received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2009 where she studied poetry and music. In 2011, she moved from New York to Oakland to attend Mills College where she graduated with an MFA in poetry in 2013. She is currently an associate editor at New Harbinger Publications.

Long Description

Winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize, The Loved Ones presents an intimate portrait of family grief, for fans of Maggie Nelson's Jane: A Murder and Kristin Prevallet's I, Afterlife There are so many ways to bury the dead. In an autobiographical series of essays, The Loved Ones explores the deaths of four family members across three generations: an inexplicable double murder, a fatal car accident, a long illness, and a conscripted solider killed in action. The Loved Ones is about the intricate reality of grief, the instability of time and memory in the face of loss, and the feeling of being left behind still living. It asks, what does it mean to bury our loved ones when our only desire is to never let them go?

Author Comments

This book originated out of necessity. I have lost asignificant family member every four years since I was 17. All that I could dowith it was write. Each death was very different-disease or "naturalcauses," murder, and accident. Some, like the loss of my father, made mecontemplative in my writing, digging into the emotional experience of death.Others elicited in me a more obsessive reaction. I wanted to understand thedetails of my cousin's murder. I needed to know exactly what happened so that Icould process the grief. After my brother died, having little to investiagate,I found myself with a renewed interest in the death of my great uncle in WWII.I found comfort and purpose in research. Originally, these were all discrete projects. Manypieces in this book date back to around 2011. But over the years, they allstarted to look to me like different facets of death. It was me and death atthe center, our relationship. I became more and more interested in other formsof death: capital punishment, medically-assisted suicide, militaryconscription. I began to line up these interests with my experiences-putting capitalpunishment and murder next to one another; medically-assisted suicide and"natural" death from disease next to one another; military conscription orsolider's death and "freak accident" next to one another-to see what would cometo the surface. I have always been interested in death andfuneral rites. I've done quite a bit of study on cultural responses to death.But I have no interest in exoticizing how cultures different from my own grievetheir dead. Instead, I wanted to illuminate the variety within my own culture.

Description for Sales People

*Stunning and deeply emotional memoir from a celebrated sophomore author on death in a family and ways of grieving, for fans of Maggie Nelson and Kristen Prevallet *Well-connected Bay Area writer with strong ties to and support from the local writing community *Special outreach to the author's local indies, including Moe's Books, Spectator Books, City Lights, Green Apple, Adobe Books, Walden Pond, and Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore *E-galleys available on Edelweiss *Extensive award submission *Co-op budget available

Details