Rachel Weaver is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, Point of Direction, was chosen by the ABA in spring 2014 as a Top Ten Debut and awarded the 2015 WILLA Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her second novel, The Last Run, is due out in June 2026. Prior to earning her MFA in writing and poetics from Naropa University, Weaver worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors, and songbirds. She is on faculty at Wilkes University's low-residency MFA program and at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She lives in Colorado.

"Dizzy is a memoir of the highest quality. It brings beauty and urgency to the overall necessary conversation about the U.S. medical system, while also functioning as a beautifully written literary memoir. This high-stakes story is spiked with moments of uncommon wisdom, poignancy, and deep emotion. I was moved to tears many times."

--Erika Krouse, author of Save Me, Stranger: Stories

Dizzy evokes what life is in wreckage of chronic illness, with suffering compounded by abandonment by specialist medicine that has no means to care for those it cannot treat. Ill people will find a lifeline of companionship in Dizzy; healthcare professionals will face a challenge. Rachel Weaver never softens her story, and that gives it truth as a testimonial to the will to live fully in whatever conditions life throws at you.

--Arthur W. Frank, author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics

"In her arresting new memoir called Dizzy, Rachel Weaver deftly avoids the prefab narrative that accounts of deliverance from chronic illness usually fall into."

--Maureen Corrigan "NPR's Fresh Air" (2/9/2026 12:00:00 AM)

"Imagine being dizzy for over a decade, where the walls, the floor, trees, words, everything swirls, every day, every night, all the time. Now imagine--no doubt this part is easier--going to doctor after doctor, who allows you 7-minutes, then diagnoses, doses, doubts, dismisses, and doesn't cure you. In the hands of a less skilled storyteller, the depiction of this hellscape could feel like hell. But Weaver interweaves riveting tales of her time as a ranger in the wilds of Alaska. While dosing you with the sublimity of nature, she provides deep insights into loss and grief and living with the knowledge that life can turn precarious in a second. Dizzy is a testament to the power of hope. Weaver's courage and strength are so inspiring they encourage the same in the reader. If all of that isn't enough, the beauty and agility of the prose may make you regret reaching the last page."

--Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars with Boys

Publisher: West Virginia University Press

Pub date: 2026-02-10

Length: 324 pages