New Book & Cover Art!
I’m excited to announce that I have a new book coming out on January 19th, 2021 from Overlook Press! It’s called How I Learned to Hate in Ohio and is a funny/sad coming of age story set in 1985-86 in central Ohio. the cover art recently came through and I love its 80’s nostalgic feel. Reminds me of Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. More soon!
“A gripping medical mystery, a heartwarming personal journey, and a chilling indictment of the commonly prescribed drug that upended MacLean’s life — but left his superb literary skills intact.” — Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
“Incandescent . . . MacLean’s account is raw and unsparing, and will surely take you out of your comfort zone — the reader is immersed in the writer’s oblivion and his vertiginous journey of recovery — but the reward for sticking with it is the privilege of reading MacLean’s profound and finely nuanced meditation on memory and identity.” — Seattle Times
If bad things are going to happen, we are lucky when they happen to someone with the wit, humanity and sweetness — to say nothing of an eye for detail and a gift for pacing — that MacLean brings to this wrenching tale . . . Readers who flip open the book will find MacLean, preserved between pages, goofy and serious, lost and found.” — Chicago Tribune
“[MacLean] writes eloquently about the bizarre and disturbing experience of having his sense of self erased and then reconstructed from scratch.” — The New Yorker
“As harrowing as this territory is, MacLean makes an affable, sure-footed guide . . . Thanks to his raw, honest, and beautiful memoir, readers will already have a clear idea what his experience was like. We can be grateful MacLean has remembered so much, and so well.” — The New York Times
“A deeply moving account of amnesia that explores the quandary of the self . . . MacLean has written a memoir that combines the evocative power of William Styron’s Darkness Visible, the lyric subtlety of Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, and the narrative immediacy of a Hollywood action film. He reminds us how we are all always trying to find a version of ourselves that we can live with.” — Los Angeles Times
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David Stuart MacLean is a PEN/American award-winning essayist. His essays and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Guernica, Bennington Review, Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, The New York Times, the Guardian, and on the radio program This American Life.
He is the author of the memoir The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, which won Best Memoir/Biography by the Society of Midland Authors and was named one of the Best Books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews.
He has a PhD in Literature/Creative Writing from the University of Houston, he was a Fulbright Scholar in India, and is a co-founder of the award-winning Poison Pen Reading Series. He has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University and a BA in English from Warren Wilson College.
He has been a featured speaker at medical conferences, writing conferences, schools, universities, art galleries, and counseling centers.
In 2018, an essay of his titled "The Golden Friendship Club" was named as an honorable mention in both Best American Essays and Pushcart Prizes in Fiction. In 2018 as well, David attended the first ever Quinism Conference and served as the inaugural Sue Rose Lecturer.
He lives in Chicago
About
David Stuart MacLean is a PEN/American award-winning writer. He is the author of the memoir The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, which was named one of the Best Books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews and won the Best Biography & Memoir award from the Society of Midland Authors in 2015. He’s the co-founder of the Poison Pen Reading Series in Houston, TX and was a Fulbright Scholar to India. He has taught at The University of Chicago, Columbia College, The University of Houston, and the Cook County Department of Corrections. He lives in Chicago with his wife, kids, and a mediocre cat. His first novel, How I Learned to Hate in Ohio, will be published in October 2020 by Overlook Press.
