Amy Leach

This collection of essays from an award-winning writer describes the similarities between love and vines and how exploding stars are related to exploding sea cucumbers, as well as tackling subjects like jellyfish, fainting goats and placid caterpillars.

Essays

Things that are

In short, gloriously inventive essays, Amy Leach invites us to see and celebrate our oddball, interconnected world Are you feeling dismay, despair, disillusion? Need a break from the ho-hum, the hopeless, and the hurtful? Feel certain that there’s a version of our world that doesn’t break down into tiny categories of alliance, but brings everybody together into one clattering, sometimes discordant but always welcoming chorus of glorious pandemonium? “Humans, please turn your guns into kazoos.” Amy Leach, the celebrated author of the transcendent Things That Are, invites you into The Everybody Ensemble, a book filled with praise songs, poetry, ingenious critique, soul-lifting philosophy, and whimsical but scientific trips into nature. It is equal parts call to reason and joy—where reason involves a long view of self-interest that, necessarily, means taking care of the earth and everything in it. In these pages, meet platypus, Tycho Brahe (and his moose), barnacle goslings, medieval mystics, music theory, photosynthetic bacteria, and a wholly fresh representation of the biblical Job. Through these and more, Leach delivers unexpected wisdom and a wake-up call that sounds from within. For readers of Ross Gay, Eula Biss, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even Lewis Carroll, these twenty-four essays will be a perfect match. They are an effervescent tonic for the curious, the exhausted, and anyone in need of a good mind-stretch or a liberating belly laugh.

Donkeys, Essays, and Other Pandemoniums

The Everybody Ensemble

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A story of three witches growing up in a small town, life on track, school, spells, friendships, clothes, boys, all the usual teenage stuff. Until the premonitions start... Will Justine find it in her heart to forgive Augustus? Will the premonitions bring the girls closer together, or further apart?

Not That Witch

Things That Are

Essays by a Whiting Award winner: “Like a descendant of Lewis Carroll and Emily Dickinson . . . one of the most exciting and original writers in America.” —Yiyun Li, author of Must I Go Things That Are takes jellyfish, fainting goats, and imperturbable caterpillars as just a few of its many inspirations. In a series of essays that progress from the tiniest earth dwellers to the most far-flung celestial bodies—considering the similarity of gods to donkeys, the inexorability of love and vines, the relations of exploding stars to exploding sea cucumbers—Amy Leach rekindles a vital communion with the wild world, dormant for far too long. Things That Are is not specifically of the animal, the human, or the phenomenal; it is a book of wonder, one the reader cannot help but leave with their perceptions both expanded and confounded in delightful ways. This debut collection comes from a writer whose accolades precede her: a Whiting Award, a Rona Jaffe Award, a Best American Essays selection, and a Pushcart Prize, all received before her first book-length publication. Things That Are marks the debut of an entirely new brand of nonfiction writer, in a mode like that of Ander Monson, John D’Agata, and Eula Biss, but a new sort of beast entirely its own. “Explores fantastical and curious subjects pertaining to natural phenomena . . . for those interested in looking at the natural world through the lens of a fairy tale, this is a bonbon of a book.” —Kirkus Reviews

In short, gloriously inventive essays, Whiting Award-winning author Amy Leach's The Everybody Ensemble invites us to see and celebrate our oddball, interconnected world Humans, please turn your guns into kazoos. Are you feeling dismay, despair, disillusion? Need a break from the ho-hum, the hopeless, and the hurtful? Feel certain that there’s a version of our world that doesn’t break down into tiny categories of alliance but brings everybody together into one clattering, sometimes discordant but always welcoming chorus of glorious pandemonium? Amy Leach, the celebrated author of the transcendent Things That Are, invites you into The Everybody Ensemble, an effervescent tonic of a book. These short, wildly inventive essays are filled with praise songs, poetry, ingenious critique, soul-lifting philosophy, music theory, and whimsical but scientific trips into nature. Here, you will meet platypuses, Tycho Brahe and his moose, barnacle goslings, medieval mystics, photosynthetic bacteria, and a wholly fresh representation of the biblical Job. Equal parts call to reason and to joy, this book is an irrepressible celebration of our oddball, interconnected world. The Everybody Ensemble delivers unexpected wisdom and a wake-up call that sounds from within. For readers of Ross Gay, Eula Biss, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even Lewis Carroll, these twenty-four essays will be a perfect match.

Amy Leach

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