I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac
By Jamie Iredell
Published by Future Tense Books, 2013
200 pages, paperback
After two full-length collections of fiction that mixed his irreverent treatment of form and gritty real-life candor (The Book of Freaks, Prose Poems. A Novel), Jamie Iredell delivers an assured and honest collection of personal essays. I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac reveals a writer who takes on his (literal) highs and (existential) lows with the unembellished voice of an anthropologist. Erudite, funny, and fearless, Iredell dives into subjects like drugs, alcoholism, body image, racism, feminism, and religion, and shines a light on some of the darkest moments of life. The essays are personal, confessional, and ultimately full of hope.
Praise for I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac
"Jamie Iredell is an intelligent, unflinching essayist who is willing to ask important, complicated questions both of himself and all of us. Iredell finds a way to bled the personal and the cultural in ways that are relevant, in ways that demand to be heard and remembered." -Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
"Jamie Iredell writes with such honesty and tenderness about difficult and often dark subject matter. His clarity reminds me of George Saunders, the way he admits that humans are complicated and regularly stupid but find something worthwhile in our experiences. Simply put, Jamie makes me feel like the world, which terrifies me sometimes, is still a place in which I want to live, if only for writers like him." -Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Ring
"Jamie Iredell may be one of the boldest friends contemporary literature has." -Colin Winette, author of Fondly
