Jessica Handler (Creative Non-Fiction, Non-Fiction) | Atlanta, GA

Jessica Handler is the author of Invisible Sisters: A Memoir, named by the Georgia Center for the Book one of the “Twenty Five Books All Georgians Should Read.” Atlanta Magazine called it the “Best Memoir of 2009.” Her second book, Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss, was praised by Vanity Fair magazine as “a wise and encouraging guide.” Her nonfiction has appeared on NPR, in Tin House, Brevity.com, Newsweek, The Washington Post, More Magazine, and elsewhere. Honors include residencies at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, a 2010 Emerging Writer Fellowship from The Writers Center, the 2009 Peter Taylor Nonfiction Fellowship for the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, and a special mention for a Pushcart Prize.

Books

Press & Reviews

“Braving the Fire is the best book about memoir writing I’ve read. Jessica Handler provides a brilliant, empathic, and sturdy guide to help us begin, develop, and complete a work of art dealing with those difficult subjects we might fear exploring but which will become the wellspring of our most profound work.”
—Louise DeSalvo, author of Writing as a Way of Healing

“Braving the Fire is a necessary companion for any writer who wishes to write about grief. Handler gently and honestly states the difficulty and rewards of recording our most haunting stories. There is a silver bullet of hope in this guide: the remembrances of our lost loves may very well be the key to living vivid lives, healing in Technicolor.”
—Christa Parravani, author of Her

“With a sure grasp of revelatory detail, the author recalls homely verities from a vanished life. Her memory piece is an elegy for her dead sisters, who are not quite lost as long as they live in her thoughts. A heartfelt, painful family saga, skillfully told by a survivor.”
—Review of Invisible Sisters, Kirkus

“Handler tells this story with the lyrical elegance and cool remove of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking—the highest praise possible for any memoir of loss…. There is an undeniable burden in being ‘the only one left,’ but there is true grace in the act—and art—of first remembering, then surviving.”
—Review of Invisible Sisters, Atlanta Magazine

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