Life of the Party

‘Yanked every emotion on the spectrum out of me’ JAMIE LOFTUS

In this powerful, candid collection, Olivia Gatwood explores the trials and triumphs of growing up as a woman.

She celebrates the teenage girl and the colour pink while questioning the role that fear and male violence play in who we are and what we become. These piercing poems are at times blistering and riotous, and at times soulful and exuberant.

Balancing singularity of view with a sense of universal experience, Life of the Party is about the pain, the joy, the challenge, the reward of being a girl and a woman in today’s world.

‘Olivia Gatwood is a revolution of woman, a flurry of insight harnessing the language of self-assessment and acceptance’ MAHOGANY L. BROWNE

‘Asks us to remember the stories of those most vulnerable, the women whose stories are too often ignored’ THEM.US


‘An electrifying collection of poems about the agonies and ecstasies of being a young woman’ LEIGH STEIN

Reviews

Ground-breaking and original poems that candidly face the complications of the female experience, that of negotiating an existence in a world that both excited and terrifies. Gatwood's writing unearths some of my deepest fears as a woman ... These poems – cautious, direct, brave – made me face uncomfortable truths, like all great poetry should.