Patricia Lockwood was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and raised in all the worst cities of the Midwest. She is the author of two poetry collections, Balloon Pop Outlaw Black and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a New York Times Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Slate, and the London Review of Books. Lockwood lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
"What I love about this book was the way it feels suffused with
love - of literature, nature and the English language; for her
family . . . one of the pleasures of this memoir is its
particularly tender mother-daughter bond . . . Lockwood's voice is
wonderfully grounded and authentic . . .she proves herself a
formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she
pleases." --Gemma Sieff, The New York Times Book Review
"Priestdaddy roars from the gate . . . it's not just that Lockwood
has fresh eyes and quick wits, but that in her father she's lucked
upon one of the great characters of this nonfiction decade . . .
Lockwood's prose is cute and dirty and innocent and experienced,
Betty Boop in a pas de deux with David Sedaris . . . I suspect it
may mean a lot to many people, especially the lapsed Catholics
among us. It is, for sure, like no book I have read." --Dwight
Garner, The New York Times "Wildly entertaining...[Lockwood's]
humor and poetic descriptions are both impressively prolific, every
sentence somehow funnier than the one you just read." --New York
Magazine's The Cut "[A] vivid, unrelentingly funny memoir...
[Lockwood's] stories . . . are both savage and tender, shot through
with surprises and revelations."--New Yorker "One of the year's
most singular memoirs . . . Lockwood's prose has the lyricism and
perfect peculiarity of her poetry, diffusing the sometimes-darkness
of her own life in a brilliantly observed kaleidoscope of kook." -
Elle Magazine, The Best Books of 2017 "Gives 'confessional memoir'
a new layer of meaning. From its hilariously irreverent first
sentence, this daughter's story of her guitar-jamming,
abortion-protesting, God-fearing father will grab you by the
clerical collar and won't let go."--Vanity Fair "Remarkable . . .
Lockwood proceeds with a near unflagging sense of ironic exuberance
and verbal inventiveness . . . this superabundance of comic energy
and literary vigor is a measure of Lockwood's
seriousness."--Washington Post "With this ferocious, bodacious
memoir, Lockwood finally mounts her own pulpit, reclaiming a story
that all along was hers alone to tell."--O, The Oprah Magazine "A
sharply written and (I can't overstate this) relentlessly funny
family history . . .Lockwood's language swerves into sumptuous
poetry several times per chapter."--Boston Globe "A memoir about
growing up different and Catholic, but unlike any you've read
before. Poet and writer Patricia Lockwood brings her uniquely
bracing yet humorous prose to the story of where it all began:
home."--Glamour Magazine "Here, using the same offbeat
intelligence, comic timing, gimlet skill for observation and verbal
dexterity that she uses in both her poetry and her tweets,
[Lockwood] delivers an unsparing yet ultimately affectionate
portrait of faith and family... Priestdaddy gives both believers
and nonbelievers a great deal to contemplate."--Chicago Tribune
"Funny and gorgeously written, with scenes so witty and zany they
could be lifted from a Broadway show, Priestdaddy will be one of
the major prose debuts of the year." --The Huffington Post
"Priestdaddy is a revelatory debut, a meditation on family and art
that finds poetry in the unlikeliest things, including poetry.
Patricia Lockwood's prose is nothing short of ecstatic; every
sentence hums with vibrant, anarchic delight, and her portrait of
her epically eccentric family life is funny, warm, and stuffed to
bursting with emotional insight. If I could write like this, I
would." --Joss Whedon "Lockwood is antic, deadpan, heartbreaking. .
. each sentence shimmies with wonderful, obscene life."
--npr.org "Lockwood's humor can shape-shift into something else
entirely, something quite moving. . . Priestdaddy is a book
necessary for 2017--a meditation on living in the house of an
unabashed patriarch, of asserting one's humanity and continuing to
take up space."
- The Rumpus "Lockwood is one of the great original voices of this
new century and she is in total control of it here."
--The Awl "The story of a very loving and eccentric family, full of
American contradictions and dense with brilliant sentences that
Lockwood seems to toss off as if she were brushing lint from her
sweater."
- Vulture.com "Patricia Lockwood's side-splitting Priestdaddy puts
the poetry back in memoir. Her verbal verve creates a reading
experience of effervescent joy, even as Lockwood takes you through
some of her life's darker passages. Destined to be a classic,
Priestdaddy is this year's must-read memoir." --Mary Karr, author
of The Liars' Club "Beautiful, funny and poignant. I wish I'd
written this book." --Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy
"Lockwood has the singular ability to sear you with its often
comical, but rarely less than sublime beauty. Her words work as
lightning; they devastate with extreme efficiency, you continue to
see them in front of you even when you've closed your eyes."--Nylon
"This is a story about all kinds of sacred things... Lockwood's
estrangement is born of intimacy, and she chronicles it with clear
eyes."
--Guernica "A sidesplittingly funny, and simply gorgeously written
reflection on her father's decision to become a Catholic priest. As
poignantly self-reflective as it is authoritative and enlightening
about the state of the Catholic Church--and modern religion--today,
PRIESTDADDY's buzz is sure to sustain us all summer
long."--Harper's Bazaar "A powerful true story from one of
America's most relevant and funniest writers. . . the commandingly
written Priestdaddy--about family, religion, identity and
trauma--will certainly make you laugh out loud. But it may also
move you to tears."
--Playboy "Irreverently reverent . . . It is easy to be distracted
and delighted by [Lockwood's] strange, phosphorescent prose, but
the wisp of an idea brushes against you, and before you know it,
there's a welt."
--New Republic
"These vignettes of growing up as the daughter of a married
Catholic priest (rare but possible) are so darkly funny that I
found myself hooting with laugher and highlighting passages like
crazy."
--Omnivoracious "Lockwood's book is really a rather deliciously
old-school, big-R Romantic endeavor: a chronicle of the growth of a
mind, the evolution of an imagination."
--The Atlantic
"I'm an agnostic, but I truly believe that we are all blessed by
Patricia Lockwood's decision to lend her amazing facility for
language to prose with Priestdaddy. It's a hilarious book full of
heavy truths; a wonderful study of one of life's most precious
resources - beautiful weirdos." --Andy Richter
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