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A raw and bold memoir about abuse and addiction, and the power of expression and community that helped Stephanie Kuehnert, the author of Ballads of Suburbia and regular Rookie contributor, survive and thrive.
Told in varied narrative styles, including journal entries, original illustration, and pages torn from her actual diaries and zines, this is the memoir of Stephanie's life as a struggling outsider who survived substance and relationship abuse to become a strong young woman after years and years trapped in a cycle that sometimes seemed to have no escape.
"Harrowing but ultimately triumphant." —Booklist (starred review)
"[S]trong, captivating voice…a memoir with sharp teeth and a soft underbelly, the product mirroring the author's catharsis in creating art." —Publishers Weekly
"A raw, deep dive into one young woman's struggle for wholeness." —Kirkus Reviews
This information about Pieces of a Girl was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stephanie Kuehnert got her start writing bad poetry about unrequited love and razor blades in eighth grade. In high school, she discovered punk rock and produced several D.I.Y. feminist zines. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. Her first YA novel, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, was published by MTV Books in July 2008, and her second, Ballads of Suburbia, was published in July 2009. In addition to writing novels, she is a teacher and was a staff writer for Rookie, the acclaimed online magazine for teenage girls. Stephanie lives in Seattle with her husband and two cats.
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