Join us for the Philadelphia launch of Shayne Terry's Leave: A Postpartum Account, out now from Autofocus Books. Shayne will be in conversation with Jiordan Castle, author of Disappearing Act. The two will discuss their books, the craft of writing about real people, and resisting the conventions of traditional memoir. Literary friendship will be abundant, and refreshments will be served.
This event is free, but we encourage you to register in advance on Eventbrite.
Both Shayne and Jiordan’s books will be available for purchase and signing at the event. If you’d prefer to purchase in advance, you can find Leave here and Disappearing Act here.
About the Book: Shayne Terry’s fourth trimester is not going as planned. Instead of bonding with her new baby, she’s stuck on the couch with a third-degree tear, barely able to walk. When the women in her family show up to help, they come bearing family secrets and old wounds that also need repair. Begun as notes on Terry’s phone documenting a parental leave gone awry, Leave examines a healing process complicated by capitalism, intergenerational trauma, and a healthcare system with a long history of devaluing women. This powerful postpartum account treats birth as a portal, one that can connect us to a lineage of pain, joy, death, and life. And at a time when our bodily autonomy is being stripped away, Leave is an urgent exploration of one woman’s experience recovering from birth in America. (A Chicago Review of Books Most Anticipated Book of 2025)
“I want to give this to every woman I know.” — Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive and Eat Only When You’re Hungry
“I’ve never read a book like this before. It’s a must for anyone with a body, struggling to right itself in these difficult times." — Carley Moore, author of The Not Wives and Panpocalypse
About the authors:
Shayne Terry's work has appeared in Catapult, Chicago Review of Books, CRAFT, Electric Literature, TriQuarterly, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. She has been selected for workshops and residencies at Bread Loaf, CRIT, Tin House, and the Vermont Studio Center, and her story The Rock Is Not a Rock was included as a distinguished story of 2024 in Best American Short Stories. She lives in Brooklyn. She is on Instagram @shaynester.
Jiordan Castle is the author of Disappearing Act, a memoir in verse. Her poetry and prose appear in The New Yorker, The Millions, HuffPost, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, including the anthologies Best New Poets and What My Father and I Don’t Talk About. Originally from New York, she has a BA in Writing from the University of San Francisco and an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their dog. She is on Instagram @jiordancastle.
