Pure Flame

The best book I’ve read this year…unsparing, stylishly written, and profoundly loving, the book is as original as it is powerful… a book that expands and breaks your heart, not with sentimentality but with its intelligence and compassion. – Adelle WaldmanA provocative, meditative, funny, feminist adventure about two women trying to tell each other the stories that matter while there’s still time. – Alexander CheeRich and moving … Orange skirts the traps of the mother-daughter memoir by going beyond personal history… Pure Flame may be Orange’s legacy. – Maggie Doherty * New York Times *Recasts the notion of maternal legacy and fills it with pointed mystery and informed sincerity. Pure Flame is a tutorial in bending creative non-fiction. – Kiese LaymonSometimes achingly sad, but often warm and evocative… a brilliant work of feminist critique. – Lauren Puckett-Pope * US Elle *Powerful …honest, fair, and compassionate. – Veronica Esposito * Literary Hub *[A] nuanced and original memoir – Terri Apter * Times Literary Supplement *

Michelle Orange is the acclaimed author of This Is Running for Your Life- Essays, which was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker. Her writing has appeared in various publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Bookforum, McSweeney’s, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, which awarded her the 2019 Staige D. Blackford Prize for non-fiction. She teaches in the writing programmes at Goucher College and Columbia University, and divides her time between Brooklyn and Baltimore.