Otherwise

Otherwise, the winner of the 2022 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize, is a personal lyrical essay collection by Lambda Literary Award Winner, Julie Marie Wade.

In this series of intimate, braided essays written throughout her 30s, Wade traces her own unwinding and becoming through probing lyricism: "I am a butterfly at half-mast. Muscles coiled like springs. I have not unwound yet." As a daughter, lover, lesbian, and writer, she invites readers on a journey of self-discovery framed by memory, literature, and popular culture. Touching and tender, empathic and insightful, Otherwise revels in its author's self-acceptance at the threshold of mid-life.