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Kiese Laymon
Memoir & Personal Growth
Kiese Laymon is an American writer and professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University, author of memoirs including Heavy: An American Memoir.
Biography
Kiese Laymon was born August 15, 1974, in Jackson, Mississippi. He is an American writer and a professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University.
He is the author of three full-length books: the novel Long Division (2013) and two memoirs, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (2013) and Heavy: An American Memoir (2018). His work examines the physical and emotional effects of violence, grief, trauma, and abuse on himself and his family, addressing personal struggles such as an eating disorder and gambling addiction. Laymon received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022 in recognition of his writing.
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Books by Kiese Laymon
Heavy
Heavy traces how violence, grief, trauma, and abuse manifest on Laymon’s body and family, addressing his eating disorder and gambling addiction while seeking to bring hidden harms into the light.