In-Person: Sex with a Brain Injury by Annie Liontas

We are so excited to welcome Annie Liontas to the bookstore for an event celebrating the paperback release of Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery. For this event, Annie will be joined in conversation by Jessamine Chan.

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required! Masks are required for all in-person events at W&CF.

This powerful and deeply personal memoir in essays “reflects on history, philosophy, and love while living with head trauma” (The New York Times Book Review).
“An infuriatingly gorgeous, important book.” —Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties * “A riveting book about embodiment, pain, identity, and intimacy…this book is a stunning achievement.” —Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
After suffering multiple concussions in her thirties, Annie Liontas shares what it means to be one of the “walking wounded” in Sex with a Brain Injury. Facing her fear, her rage, her physical suffering, and the effects of head trauma on her marriage and other relationships, Liontas is forced to reckon with her own queer mother’s battle with addiction and finds echoes in their pain. Liontas weaves history, philosophy, and personal accounts to interrogate and expand representations of mental health, ability, and disability—particularly in relation to women and the LGBT community. She uncovers the surprising legacy of brain injury, examining its role in culture, the criminal justice system, and through historical figures like Henry VIII and Harriet Tubman. Through Liontas’s sharp, affecting prose, we can imagine this kind of pain, and having to claw one’s way back to a new normal. The hidden gift of injury, Liontas writes, is the ability to connect with others.
For the millions of people who have suffered from concussions and for those who have endeavored to support loved ones through the painful and often baffling experience of head trauma, this intimate memoir of a profound affliction and resilience…stands as testimony to love and patience” (Kirkus Reviews).

Annie Liontas is the genderqueer author of the crip-queer memoir Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery, which was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and selected as SELF Magazine’s Book of the Month. Their debut novel, Let Me Explain You, was selected as New York Times Editors Choice in 2015. They co-edited the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors, and their work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Book Review, Electric Literature, BOMB, Lithub, The Believer, American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s, Oprah Daily, and elsewhere. A graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program, Annie is an Associate Professor of writing at George Washington University and serves as faculty at the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon. Annie has volunteered as a mentor for Pen City’s incarcerated writers and helped secure a Mellon Foundation grant on Disability Justice to bring storytelling to communities in the criminal justice system. They co-host the literary podcast LitFriends and live in Philadelphia with their wife, dog, and Email the rabbit.

Jessamine Chan’s stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University. She lives in Chicago with her family. The School for Good Mothers is her first novel.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. We have dimmable, non-fluorescent lights. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email [email protected].

Event Venue

Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States