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.

"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

"Selected Misdemeanors invites us to do what often feels impossible--to reframe difficult memories, not as good or bad, but as glimpses into a larger whole. Silverman does this with eloquence, reminding us that we can own our stories and meet our past selves with empathy."--Aurora Bonner, Center for Literary Publishing

"These stories take a nonlinear path that makes the memoir so authentic and resonant as well as showing us that real growth is messy."--booksthatmakeyou.com

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Pub date: 2025-09-01

Length: 204 pages