Executrix by Brittany Perham

Executrix by Brittany Perham

Executrix begins with a mystery: Why would the author’s father, from whom she had been estranged for more than a decade, change his will in the weeks before his death to make her the executor of his estate? Executrix charts the process of sorting out the business of this indebted estate using the language of real estate foreclosure, income tax audits, and medical records. The executor transforms the disjointed details of a life into a tidy financial narrative that meets the demands of claimants; the writer transforms the disjointed details of a life into a story that meets the demands of memory. Through this twin accounting, Perham asks the big questions: What are the implications of being the child of an alcoholic? How do we reconcile memories that are fragmented, elided, or nonexistent? And what does it mean to write true “nonfiction”? With surprising humor, real tenderness, and, above all, a daring formal inventiveness, Executrix launches a critical investigation into family stories and secrets, and the genre of memoir itself.

BRITTANY PERHAMis the author of Double Portrait, which received the Barnard Women Poets Prize; The Curiosities; and, with Kim Addonizio, the collaborative word/art project The Night Could Go in Either Direction. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction appear in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Poetry Society of America, The San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. Perham’s work has received support from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Hemingway House, the James Merrill House Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program, and Yaddo. She lives in San Francisco.