Leslie Jamison

“If this book began as an exploration of longing, then it ended up becoming an exploration of dwelling,” writes Leslie Jamison of her new essay collection, Make It Scream, Make It Burn. Jamison, also the author of New York Times bestseller The Empathy Exams, is an essayist of rigorous intellect and deeply felt observations. In the new collection, Jamison’s prose, which spans narrative journalism and personal essay, is lucid and unsettling. Subjects include 52 Blue, otherwise known as “the loneliest whale in the world;” Jamison’s experience becoming a stepmother; and an entire musuem dedicated to the aftermath of breakups. “It was a kind of longing that did not imply absence. It was a longing that belonged,” she writes in this month’s The Atlantic. Sentences like these, both intimate and expansive, distinguish Jamison’s craft and curiosities.