Literary Nonfiction. Joel Peckham's writing is essential reading for me. He's a contemporary whose work I need to read to understand the world I live in. His first collection, RESISTING ELEGY, hit me as a revelation because of its intimacy, its depth, and its unflinching honesty--not only with the reader, but with himself. There are very few people in the world willing to take such a terrifying journey into the essence of their own lives and far, far fewer with the skills to take us along with them. Peckham is one of those people and his voice guides us through a darkness we'd be too afraid to explore alone. And then there is the writing. Peckham's exquisite language does what writing is supposed to do--envelope you in a new universe and take you on a dramatic and emotional journey. His new collection, BODY MEMORY, continues what is now his hallmark: It explores the deeply personal and hard-to- articulate understandings of what it means to both have a body and also be one. His fears, his phobias, his frailties are all on display so we can better understand ourselves and what it means to be alive--and to be grateful to be alive--today.--Derek B. Miller