OUT NOW:
The Kick-Ass Debut by Breakout 8 Writer Amy Lee Lillard
"Bold, brash, unforgettable. Delivers an unfiltered ten-pack of power."
-Cityview Des Moines
-Cityview Des Moines
cover design by Nathan Shields
"Asks the reader to be willing to break the furniture
while reading."
-Gertrude Press
"Damn! I'm jealous of the sheer brio and adventuresomeness of these stories -- Amy Lee
Lillard's willingness to try on different forms,
genders, identities, and voices in the service
of dark truths. This is a firecracker debut
with a rock n roll wildness at its heart."
-KARAN MAHAJAN
author of The Association of Small Bombs
"A fierce debut collection inhabited by a wild multitude of characters. The women in Amy Lee Lillard’s stories catalogue the strangeness of the natural world, want to escape the confines of the body, seek revenge
against convention, are witchy, feral, ready to tear free."
-CHANELLE BENZ
author of The Gone Dead and The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead
while reading."
-Gertrude Press
"Damn! I'm jealous of the sheer brio and adventuresomeness of these stories -- Amy Lee
Lillard's willingness to try on different forms,
genders, identities, and voices in the service
of dark truths. This is a firecracker debut
with a rock n roll wildness at its heart."
-KARAN MAHAJAN
author of The Association of Small Bombs
"A fierce debut collection inhabited by a wild multitude of characters. The women in Amy Lee Lillard’s stories catalogue the strangeness of the natural world, want to escape the confines of the body, seek revenge
against convention, are witchy, feral, ready to tear free."
-CHANELLE BENZ
author of The Gone Dead and The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead
"Buckle your belts -- this rocket is ready to launch,
and Saturnalia never felt so near!"
-ROBERT ANTONI
author of As Flies to Whatless Boys and Cut Guavas
"Original and highly imaginative stories. Amy Lee Lillard is a daring writer."
-CARTER SICKELS, author of The Prettiest Star
“The women in these stories loom large. They take up space, raise their voice, fight back and break free. In stories spanning worlds long past to far dystopian future, we find women who channel rage and turn it into power, digging out of old lives, shedding skin, becoming something animal, elemental, new. These are queer women, but not just in sexuality: theirs are bodies in protest, retaliating against and reclaiming themselves from the patriarchal powers that attempt to own them, redefining what it means to be women. Set to a rebellious Riot Grrrl soundtrack, this book is a feminist battle cry, a fist with black-painted nails pumped in dark Chicago clubs, in Midwestern cities and suburbs full of women who are hungry, who long for more, who scratch and claw and dig — into the earth, into their own skin — to find something better. A fierce reclamation of femininity, sexuality, and selfhood, Dig Me Out made me pump my own fist in the air, reminding me of all the lives we can find when we’re brave enough to dig."
-MELISSA FALIVENO
author of Tomboyland
"When I first encountered Amy Lillard’s fiction three years ago in Epiphany's Breakout Writers issue, I looked her up, desperately hoping she had a book coming out. The wait is over, and what a dazzling book it is! With spare and unassuming prose, Lillard has produced a radically profound and unforgettable story collection that upends received notions of femininity and storytelling. Through their aspirations, their desires, their insecurities, and their heartbreaks, the women in Dig Me Out offer us nuanced insights into the human condition."
-JEANNIE VANASCO
author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl
and Saturnalia never felt so near!"
-ROBERT ANTONI
author of As Flies to Whatless Boys and Cut Guavas
"Original and highly imaginative stories. Amy Lee Lillard is a daring writer."
-CARTER SICKELS, author of The Prettiest Star
“The women in these stories loom large. They take up space, raise their voice, fight back and break free. In stories spanning worlds long past to far dystopian future, we find women who channel rage and turn it into power, digging out of old lives, shedding skin, becoming something animal, elemental, new. These are queer women, but not just in sexuality: theirs are bodies in protest, retaliating against and reclaiming themselves from the patriarchal powers that attempt to own them, redefining what it means to be women. Set to a rebellious Riot Grrrl soundtrack, this book is a feminist battle cry, a fist with black-painted nails pumped in dark Chicago clubs, in Midwestern cities and suburbs full of women who are hungry, who long for more, who scratch and claw and dig — into the earth, into their own skin — to find something better. A fierce reclamation of femininity, sexuality, and selfhood, Dig Me Out made me pump my own fist in the air, reminding me of all the lives we can find when we’re brave enough to dig."
-MELISSA FALIVENO
author of Tomboyland
"When I first encountered Amy Lillard’s fiction three years ago in Epiphany's Breakout Writers issue, I looked her up, desperately hoping she had a book coming out. The wait is over, and what a dazzling book it is! With spare and unassuming prose, Lillard has produced a radically profound and unforgettable story collection that upends received notions of femininity and storytelling. Through their aspirations, their desires, their insecurities, and their heartbreaks, the women in Dig Me Out offer us nuanced insights into the human condition."
-JEANNIE VANASCO
author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl
In this multilayered, provocative, and outrageously imaginative literary debut, Amy Lee Lillard gives us ten deeply absorbing stories about the women who won't smile: angry, aching women reacting to the dismissal of their most secret or beloved needs and desires, women returning to base instincts, primal fears, and mythic power. Across past, present, and future, around the midwest and the world, these women demand we witness as they work to break through, to defy, to become. It won't be pretty, and it won't be safe, but it will be real.
Spanning genres, continents, and eras, Dig Me Out takes on misogyny and homophobia, societal and climatological violence, and the specter of our technologized future -- all with a punk rock literary twist. This collection constitutes a brilliant and rightfully dangerous work of art from a writer to tell your friends about.
Spanning genres, continents, and eras, Dig Me Out takes on misogyny and homophobia, societal and climatological violence, and the specter of our technologized future -- all with a punk rock literary twist. This collection constitutes a brilliant and rightfully dangerous work of art from a writer to tell your friends about.
Amy Lee Lillard has been shortlisted for the Berlin Writing Prize and named one of Epiphany’s Breakout 8 Writers. Her writing appears in Foglifter, Off Assignment, Adroit, Gertrude, and other publications. Lillard is one of the broads behind Broads and Books, a funny and feminist book podcast. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from the Pan-European program at Cedar Crest College, an MA in literature from Northwestern University, and a BA in English, journalism and psychology from the University of Iowa.
Amy Lee Lillard Gave a Reading from Dig Me Out during the Epiphany Magazine Year-End Celebration, Hosted by New York's McNally Jackson Books. Watch the video of Amy's reading below:
