Rooms: Women, Writing, Woolf

Rooms is a memoir by Sina Queyras that explores the defining spaces a young queer writer moved through as they found their way from a life of chaos to a life of the mind. It blends memoir, prose, tweets, poetry, and criticism to offer a peek into the spaces a young queer writer moved through as they found their way from a life of chaos to a life of the mind. Queyras journeys through rooms literal and figurative, complicating and deepening our understanding of what it means to create space for oneself as a writer.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 160 pages
Publication date: 24 June 2022
Publisher: Coach House Books

SHORTLISTED FOR THE QWF MAVIS GALLANT PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION


THE GLOBE 100: THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022




From LAMBDA Literary Award winner Sina Queyras, Rooms offers a captivating glimpse into the pivotal spaces a young queer writer traversed as they journeyed from a life of chaos to a life of the mind.


Thirty years ago, a professor hurled a chair at Sina Queyras after they submitted an essay on Virginia Woolf. Queyras revisits that contentious initial encounter with Virginia Woolf in this book, aiming to reclaim the body and thoughts of that time. Drawing inspiration from Woolf's seminal work, "A Room of One's Own," this book serves as both an homage and a provocation to the notion of a room of one's own at the heart of our understanding of a literary life.


How central is the room? And what transpires once we acquire one? Do we inhabit our rooms? Or do the rooms contain us? Through a blend of memoir, prose, tweets, poetry, and criticism, Rooms provides a revealing exploration of the defining spaces a young queer writer navigated as they transitioned from a life of turmoil to a life of the mind, and from a deeply private realm of the mind to a public life of the page, and from a life of the page to a life within the Academy, the Internet, and social media.


With Virginia Woolf by their side, Queyras embarks on a journey through both literal and figurative spaces, intricately complicating and enriching our comprehension of the act of creating space for oneself as a writer. Their honed language urges us to resist any facile associations with Woolf's renowned "room with an easy freedom." Inspiring and poignant, Queyras's memoir serves as a testament to Woolf's enduring generative power.


In this exquisite and insightful book, Sina Queyras skillfully weaves words together, creating a tapestry of literary brilliance.

Dimension: 203 x 127 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781552454336