An urgent, provocative new memoir written by a First Nations woman; the narrative style is non-linear, written like a lyrical prose poem, with echoes of the style found in recent works such as Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts Heart Berries pushes the boundaries of form, using storytelling as a way to reveal how memory functions or fragments (as a blend between remembrance, imagination, trauma, and acceptance) With an introduction by Sherman Alexie and confirmed forthcoming endorsements by Maggie Nelson, Roxane Gay, Louise Erdrich, Eula Bliss and Elissa Washuta Submitted for consideration for the ABA Indies Introduce and B&N Discover Great New Writers programs, as well as to the Junior Library Guild New Adult/YA Crossover catalogs For readers who loved Joy Harjo’s CRAZY BRAVE and Lidia Yuknavitch’s THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER Author has published her essays widely, including in The Toast and The Rumpus, and her essay, ‘I Know I’ll Go,’ was listed as notable in Best American Essays 2016. Praise from Librarians and Booksellers ‘Some books need us more than we need them. Others, the rare ones, are gifts that restore potency to language, confront trauma with wiliness and craft, and revitalize the world. Heart Berries is one these rare books.’ -Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books (Point Reyes Station, CA) ‘Heart Berries is a slender jewel of a memoir written by a wholly original and unexpected new voice. I have never read anyone like Terese Marie Mailhot-each page delivers new and delightful ways to play with words and sentence structure, in an extremely natural and organic way (nothing overwritten or precious here). It doesn’t feel like it was written so much as physically extracted from her body like a root, gnarled and dirty and honest and beautiful. I cried, and laughed, and never wanted it to end. I can’t wait to see what she does next.’ -Leah Cushman, Powell’s Books (Portland, OR) ‘Over twenty years have passed since Mary Karr’s Liars’ Club burst on the scene and delivered an electric shock to the memoir. I’d say that’s just about the appropriate amount of time for the dust to have settled enough to create the perfect environment in which Terese Marie Mailhot’s debut, Heart Berries, could reawaken the genre once more. I’m not sure mental illness or America’s pastime of indigenous exploitation has been tackled with such ferocity and honesty before. Mailhot has a knack for hiding poems within her prose, and each chapter sings with spine-chilling exactness. I found myself rereading almost every passage enough to where I had nearly read the book twice by the time I got to the end. Take my (and Sherman Alexie’s) word here: Mailhot is a damn good voice-one to watch for many years to come.’ -John Gibbs, Green Apple Books on the Park (San Francisco, CA) ‘In a time of memoirs that, at best, help a reader know what vulnerability and facing down fear are, Terese Marie Mailhot’s cathartic, moving Heart Berries, is one of the bravest and m
