Most Popular Books by Mary Karr

Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.

The author, a poet, recounts her difficult childhood growing up in a Texas oil town.

Mary Karr’s third memoir, Lit, tells her tale of getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr’s relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying coming-of-age story. Karr, the self-professed blackbelt sinner, painstakingly reveals her descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness-and her astonishing resurrection. “[Lit] Reminds us not only how compelling personal stories can be, but how, in the hands of a master, they can transmute into the highest art.”-Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe

From Mary Karr comes this gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age. Picking up where the bestselling The Liars'' Club left off, Karr dashes down the trail of her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. Fleeing the thrills and terrors of adolescence, she clashes against authority in all its forms and hooks up with an unforgettable band of heads and bona-fide geniuses. Parts of Cherry will leave you gasping with laughter. Karr assembles a self from the smokiest beginnings, delivering a long-awaited sequel that is both "bawdy and wise" (San Francisco Chronicle).

In her first book since "The Liar''s Club", Karr delves into the autobiographical subject matter of her two early collections. Various beloveds are birthed and buried in these lyrics, some of which--as the title suggests--deal with drink. Exact and surprising, her poems "take on the bedevilments of fate and grief with a diabolical edge of their own" ("Poetry").

A fourth compilation of poetry by the author of The Liars'' Club and Cherry describes her evolution into an irreverent Catholic, detailing the various steps in her conversion and reflecting on the themes of loss, her tutelage in Jesuit prayer practice, and the influence of poetry as a pathway out of suffering. 25,000 first printing.

Lit follows Mary Karr''s descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness—and her astonishing resurrection. Karr''s longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can''t outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. It is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it.

A celebration of curiosity, compassion, and the surprising power of fear, based on the New York Times bestselling author and renowned professor’s 2015 commencement address at Syracuse University. “Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious & compassionate will save your ass.” Every year there are one or two commencement speeches that strike a chord with audiences far greater than the student bodies for which they are intended. In 2015 Mary Karr’s speech to the graduating class of Syracuse University caught fire, hailed across the Internet as one of the most memorable in recent years, and lighting up the Twittersphere. In Now Go Out There, Karr explains why having your heart broken is just as—if not more—important than falling in love; why getting what you want often scares you more than not getting it; how those experiences that appear to be the worst cannot be so easily categorized; and how to cope with the setbacks that inevitably befall all of us. “Don’t make the mistake of comparing your twisted up insides to other people’s blow-dried outsides,” she cautions. “Even the most privileged person in this stadium suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human.” An ideal—and beautifully designed—gift for a graduate or for anyone looking for some down-to-earth life advice, Now Go Out There is destined to become a classic.

A new volume of poetry from the New York Times bestselling and esteemed author of The Liar’s Club and Lit. Long before she earned accolades for her genre-defining memoirs, Mary Karr was winning poetry prizes. Now the beloved author returns with a collection of bracing poems as visceral and deeply felt and hilarious as her memoirs. In Tropic of Squalor, Karr dares to address the numinous—that mystery some of us hope towards in secret, or maybe dare to pray to. The "squalor" of meaninglessness that every thoughtful person wrestles with sits at the core of human suffering, and Karr renders it with power—illness, death, love’s agonized disappointments. Her brazen verse calls us out of our psychic swamplands and into that hard-won awareness of the divine hiding in the small moments that make us human. In a single poem she can generate tears, horror, empathy, laughter, and peace. She never preaches. But whether you’re an adamant atheist, a pilgrim, or skeptically curious, these poems will urge you to find an inner light in the most baffling hours of darkness.

In her celebrated essay "Against Decoration," published in Parnassus, Mary Karr took aim against the verbal ornaments that too often pass for poetry these days and their attendant justifications: deconstruction and a "new formalism" that elevates form as an end in itself. Her own poems, she says, are "humanist poems," written for everyday readers rather than an exclusive audience--poems that do not require an academic explication in order to be understood. Of The Devil''s Tour, her newest collection, she writes: "This is a book of poems about standing in the dark, about trying to memorize the bad news. The tour is a tour of the skull. l am thinking of Satan in Paradise Lost: ''The mind is its own place and it can make a hell of heav''n or a heav''n of hell ... I myself am hell."

The Adult Student''s Guide gives you practical guidelines on how to study efficiently, get financial help, gain family support, study at home, increase your self-confidence, create a support group, write papers and pass tests, use Internet resources, get excellent grades, work in learning teams, improve communication skills, hold up under pressure, succeed in a new career, create an "Accomplishments Portfolio," and be resilient in a world of nonstop change. Plus, we''ve created the Adult Student Success website to supplement the book and provide updated information valuable to adult students. Book jacket.

Retrouvant avec ses yeux d’adulte son enfance assiégée, cruelle et malheureuse, Mary Karr en a exorcisé les démons par ce récit pétillant d''insolence et de tendresse. À la fois cinglante et drôle, la petite Mary y raconte Leechfield, cette bourgade provinciale du Texas, infestée de moustiques, puant la friture et le pétrole. Elle y dresse, surtout, la chronique d''un vrai champ de bataille familial. Un père, ouvrier, à moitié indien, étrangement silencieux à la maison, qui se révèle être le meilleur conteur de cette fameuse « Bande de Menteurs » qui aime se retrouver au bar, autour d''une bière salée. Et dont les sept mariages expliquent sans doute que la mère, une femme magnifique, buvant sec elle aussi, soit si « nerveuse », comme on le dit pudiquement. Quant à la sœur aînée, prête à les réconcilier tous, elle partage avec Mary un amour fervent pour cette folle famille, déchirée entre les reproches refoulés et les crises frénétiques. Au bout du voyage, un étonnant secret réunira les pleurs et les rires, la violence et l''innocence, le désespoir et l''espérance. Jamais mémoires d''enfance n''ont atteint une telle qualité littéraire, alliant superbement la poésie de la tragédie et la verve de la comédie. Traduit de l’anglais par Sylvie Schneiter