Selected Misdemeanors

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning memoirist, essayist, and poet of eight previous books, including How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences (Nebraska, 2020) and Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul (Nebraska, 2024). She is co-chair of the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Author's Note Part 1. Strange Entanglements At the Apollo Theatre Coming Attractions Child Care On Understanding Time for the First Time Miss Demeanor Considers the Time When She Was Forced to Hold the Crayon . . . Scratching the Surface Time Travel for Beginners Postcard: The Berkshires A Treatise on Dark Matter(s) Learning the Antimatter of What Matters Retainer Postcard: Monhegan Island, Maine Harbor Lights Miss Demeanor Considers the Time in Puerto Rico . . . 7-Up as a Cure for Irony The Silence Detector My Russian Heritage Drinks for All Occasions Snow on Cherries Love Deferment Miss Demeanor Considers the First of Many Jobs . . . Miss Demeanor Considers the Time She Lived in a Room . . . Respect, Almost Miss Demeanor Considers the Time She Posed as an Israeli . . . Manilow Fidelity Carry On Part 2. How To and How Not Library with Hyacinth, Girl, and Guns How To How to Find a Snow Leopard in Georgia Negative Capabilities Miss Demeanor Considers the Time She Hid . . . Miss Demeanor Considers the Time She Was Married . . . Mug Shots with Fellow Fugitives The Poetic Sentence Missing the Clues On Liminality Exchange Rates Remembrance of Things Past The Long Road Out of Eden Postcard: Greetings from Atlantic City! The Undertaking Reflections on Blue Velvet The Family Chiroptera The Soft Beauty of an Ordinary Life Miss Demeanor Considers the Time She Stood under the Boardwalk . . . Trashy Miss Demeanor Considers the Time between Hippiedom and Adulthood . . . Degas Paints the Chippendales and Me Part 3. Grieflets Too Grieflets Psych Ward, Drought Expiration Date Against Ruin Emerald Isle Al Di LA Into the Wild of the Calm The Lost Art of the Near Tilt The Origin of Her Superpowers Miss Demeanor Must Consider, Whether She Wants to or Not . . . Miss Demeanor Must Also Consider the Time Her Father . . . Tinea Capitis A Grand Unified Theory of Disease Organ Music Dyscalculia Postcard: The Big Apple! Postcard: New York City Xeroxing Christie Miss Demeanor Considers the Time She Got Her First Author Photo . . . Miss Demeanor Considers Her Desk (Messy Like Her Life) . . . The Memory Box Seeking Paradise on the Road to Nowhere Acknowledgments

"Sue William Silverman refreshes the idea that insight is best found in the granules. From piece to piece this book constructs a constellation of wonder, each point of light written with resilience, wit, heartbreak, and a stunning forthrightness."-Paul Lisicky, author of Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell "A master essayist, Sue William Silverman harnesses all at her disposal-poetry, photographs, film, and, most of all, her luminous and lyrical prose-to resurrect memory and interrogate loneliness, longing, and loss. The result is a full-throated, gorgeous, multi-layered meditation on obsession and desire. The heat rises off the page."-Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread "The quality of Sue William Silverman's seeing, the angle of her gaze, and the way she builds a frame for readers to view our own tragic, complicated, beautiful lives make this collection distinctive. Throughout, I am struck by the way Silverman folds time, navigating the rich span of her years on this planet to locate vital patterns and connections. These essays contain such wisdom about the making of a life. . . . Silverman is a national treasure."-Jill Christman, author of If This Were Fiction