Rachael Maddux
ALLi Author Member
Location: United States of America
Genres:
I'm the author of Life Expectancy: A Memoir, and two short essay collections: The Void, and Third Person. My essays, features, and profiles have appeared in the Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review, Garden & Gun, and elsewhere. My work has been noted in Best American Sports Writing 2016 and collected in Best American Travel Writing 2015; in 2010, I was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Reviews & Criticism. I send a newsletter called Vanitas, about life, death, and other dumb stuff. I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with my family.
Rachael Maddux's books
Genres: Autobiography, Memoir, Narrative Nonfiction
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking meets Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird in this millennial coming-of-age memoir, a wry rumination on growing up mortal in the American South at the turn of the 21st century, obsessed with the question of how to live when you know you're going to die. For fans of Sloane Crosley's Grief Is for People and Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am. Advance praise: "Life Expectancy is a memoir of regular life, but in Rachael Maddux's hands, the pedestrian becomes extraordinary, the personal becomes expansive, and existential dread coexists with agile wit. The care with which she writes about her younger self is so abundant - an invitation to see our past selves in all their foolishness and glory, to love them despite and because. Life Expectancy is an intimate, tender book - never sentimental - and an absolute joy to read." -Jaime Green,...
Genres: Autobiography, Essays, Memoir
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
In October 2022, Rachael Maddux had a baby. Between December 2022 and October 2023, she published the following essays through her newsletter, Vanitas. Years later, she found herself wishing she'd taken notes during her daughter's first year. She found herself wondering if she could write a book about having a baby. Then she realized that she had taken notes, she had written that book, or at least as much of that book as she would probably ever write.
Genres: Autobiography, Essays, Memoir
Formats: E-Book, Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
Between March 2018 and July 2021, Rachael Maddux got pregnant four times and had four miscarriages. Between February 2020 and July 2022, she published these essays about her miscarriages through her newsletter, Vanitas. In these pieces, she kicks at the stubborn taboos around pregnancy loss and explores the thin lines between life and not-life at a time when reproductive rights were being decimated throughout the United States. Exasperated, heartbroken, and darkly funny, this collection is a balm for anyone stymied by their own losses, and a window into an often-obscured experience for everyone else.