Lilly dancyger
Author of
First Love (Dial Press, forthcoming)
Negative Space (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2021)
Burn It Down (Seal Press, 2019)
Lilly Dancyger is the author of First Love (forthcoming), an essay collection about the power and complexity of female friendship; and Negative Space (2021), a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards; and the editor of Burn It Down (2019), a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger from Seal Press. Lilly's writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She lives in New York City.
BOOKS BY lilly
First Love (Dial Press, forthcoming)
A collection of essays that braid memoir with cultural inquiry to explore the power and complexity of female friendships and the many different kinds of love they can contain, in the context of the ever-present threat of violence against women.
Negative Space (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2021)
Despite her parents' struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges?
Dancyger's father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene. He created provocative sculptures out of found materials, and brought his young daughter into his gritty, iconoclastic world. She idolized him--despite the escalating heroin addiction that sometimes overshadowed his creative passion. When Schactman died suddenly, just as Dancyger was entering adolescence, she went into her own self-destructive spiral, raging against the world that had taken him away. But as an adult, Dancyger began to question the mythology she'd created about her father--the brilliant artist, struck down in his prime--using his paintings, sculptures, and prints as a guide to piece together a truer story.
Featuring Schactman's artwork throughout, Negative Space explores Dancyger's grief, anger, and artistic inheritance as she sets out to illuminate the darkness her father hid from her, as well as her own.
Burn It Down (Seal Press, 2019)
A rich, nuanced exploration of women's anger from a diverse group of writers
Women are furious, and we're not keeping it to ourselves any longer. We're expected to be composed and compliant, but in a world that would strip us of our rights, disparage our contributions, and deny us a seat at the table of authority, we're no longer willing to quietly seethe behind tight smiles.
We're ready to burn it all down.
In this ferocious collection of essays, twenty-two writers explore how anger has shaped their lives: author of the New York Times bestseller The Empathy Exams Leslie Jamison confesses that she used to insist she wasn't angry -- until she learned that she was; Melissa Febos, author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning memoir Abandon Me, writes about how she discovered that anger can be an instrument of power; editor-in-chief of Bitch Media Evette Dionne dismantles the "angry Black woman" stereotype; and more.
Broad-ranging and cathartic, Burn It Down is essential reading for any woman who has scorched with rage -- and is ready to claim her right to express it.