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Book Title

Trying

Subtitle
A Memoir
Author 1
Chloé Caldwell
Body
If you’re writing about your life in real time, are you inherently fucked?
 
Over the years that Chloé Caldwell had been married and hoping to conceive a child, she’d read everything she could find on infertility. But no memoir or message board reflected her experience; for one thing, most stories ended with in vitro fertilization, a baby, or both. She wanted to offer something different.
 
Caldwell began a book. She imagined a selective journal about her experience coping with stasis and uncertainty. Is it time to quit coffee, find a new acupuncturist, get another blood test? Her questions extended to her job at a clothing boutique and to her teaching and writing practice. Why do people love equating publishing books with giving birth? What is the right amount of money to spend on pants or fertility treatments? How much trying is enough? She ignored the sense that something else in her life was wrong that was not on the page . . . until she extracted a confession from her husband.
 
Broken by betrayal but freed from domesticity, Caldwell felt reawakened, to long-buried desires, to her queer identity, to pleasure and possibility. She kept writing, making sense of her new reality as it took shape. With the candor, irreverence, and heart that have made Caldwell’s work beloved, Trying intimately captures a self in a continuous process of becoming—and the mysterious ways that writing informs that process.  

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List Price
$18.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-64445-347-6
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Pages
Pages
208
Trim Size
Trim Size
5.5 x 8.25
Keynote
From the author of the best-selling Women, a stirring account of disenfranchised grief and queer reawakening

About the Author

Chloe  Caldwell
Credit: Colleen Trainor
Chloé Caldwell is the author of Women, the memoir The Red Zone, and the essay collections I’ll Tell You in Person and Legs Get Led Astray. Her essays have appeared in the New York TimesBon Appétit, the CutAutostraddleLongreads, and Nylon.
More by author

Upcoming Events

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Leslie Jamison about TRYING at P&T Knitwear

Date:
Location:
P&T Knitwear Books and Podcasts in New York, NYview map
This is a ticketed in-store event with limited amphitheater-style seating. Doors open at 6:30 PM and the program will begin at 7:00 PM. Cost of a $5 general admission ticket can be applied towards your purchase of Trying or any product in our café the night of an event. Book bundle tickets are also available. Click here to reserve your tickets.

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Chelsea Martin about TRYING at Spokane Public Library (Liberty Park location)

Date:
Location:
Spokane Public Library - Liberty Park in Spokane, WAview map
Liberty Park location of Spokane Public Library. Copies of Trying will be available for purchase from Auntie's Bookstore.

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Genevieve Hudson about TRYING at Bishop & Wilde

Date:
Location:
Bishop & Wilde in Portland, ORview map
Free and open to the public. Copies of Trying will be available for purchase from Bishop & Wilde. Click here for details.

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Ariel Gore & Mia Arias Tsang about TRYING at Green Apple Books on the Park

Date:
Location:
Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco, CAview map

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Michelle Tea about TRYING at Stories Books & Cafe

Date:
Location:
Stories Books and Cafe in Los Angeles, CAview map

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Mia Arias Tsang about TRYING at Petals & Pages

Date:
Location:
Petals & Pages Bookstore in Denver, COview map
Free and open to the public. Copies of Trying will be available for purchase from Petals & Pages. Click here to register.

Chloé Caldwell leads a writing workshop ("Write Your Queer Break Up") at Petals & Pages Bookstore

Date:
Location:
Petals & Pages Bookstore in Denver, COview map
Join Petals & Pages for this special writing workshop with author Chloé Caldwell! There are break ups that sting and there are break ups that shatter. This two-hour cathartic and creative class will guide you in crafting your own personal essay or short story. We will read excerpts from writers Eileen Myles, Ryan Van Meter, and Andrea Gibson. Sharing will be encouraged yet optional. No breakup is turned away — this includes friend breakups, work breakups, breakups with yourself, and situationship breakups. You will leave with a new piece of writing, resources and readings from Chloé, and of course, new friends. Click here to register.

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Szilvia Molnar about TRYING at First Light Books

Date:
Location:
First Light Books in Austin, TXview map
Free and open to the public. Copies of Trying will be available for purchase from First Light Books. Please RSVP here.

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with LA Warman about TRYING at Riffraff Bookstore

Date:
Location:
Riffraff Bookstore in Providence, RIview map

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Jen Beagin about TRYING at Spencertown Academy's Festival of Books

Date:
Location:
Spencertown Academy Arts Center in Spencertown, NYview map

Chloé Caldwell reading and in conversation with Cat Cohen & Jesse James Rose about TRYING at Gowanus Gardens, presented by Books Are Magic

Date:
Location:
Gowanus Gardens in Brooklyn, NYview map
LOCATION: Gowanus Gardens. Copies of Trying will be available for purchase from Books Are Magic. Stay tuned for details!

Praise

  • “This infertility memoir ends with rebirth: Caldwell’s new, energized sense of herself. An intimate, engaging memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews

  • “[Caldwell’s] husband’s transgressions jolt the narrative off its axis, and Caldwell recounts the dizzying liberation of rediscovering her queerness after her divorce. . . . For readers grappling with similar questions about motherhood, sexuality, and the meaning of a life well-lived, it’s a gift.”—Publishers Weekly
  • “The queen of irreverence and confessionalism Chloé Caldwell . . . gives readers a wide-eyed look at her life in a time of great uncertainty. With tenderness, humility, curiosity, and familiarity that readers have come to expect from Caldwell, her latest memoir is a touching and liberating look into identity, fertility, and becoming.”—Felicia Reich, Paste Magazine
  • “In this sharply honest memoir, Women author Chloe Caldwell sets out to write about infertility—but ends up charting a far messier, more unexpected transformation. What begins as a chronicle of trying to conceive becomes a reckoning with betrayal, queer desire, and the question of what it actually means to build a life.”—Michelle Hart, Electric Literature
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