Annie Liontas joins the Spotlight this week to chat about her memoir, Sex with a Brain Injury
Author Name: Annie Liontas
Book Title: Sex with a Brain Injury
Book Genre: Memoir
Release Date: 1/16/2024
Publisher: Scribner
Welcome, Annie! Please tell us a bit about your book.
Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery is an informed memoir that weaves criticism, history, philosophy, and personal experience to tell the often invisible story of head injury. But many parts of the work resist intellectualization. They insist: this is what it feels like to have been hurt in this way. This is how a marriage suffers when one of us is sick. Virginia Woolf, of course, makes multiple appearances.
What was your process like for writing Sex with a Brain Injury?
Toni Morrison says: If there’s a book you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. During my long recovery after suffering multiple concussions, I went seeking understanding—I didn’t know what was happening to me. I couldn’t find any answers, not in my family, nor in my community, nor among support groups, not even in books, which are my greatest refuge. Because writing is always how I meet the world, I decided to put it all onto the page—my fears, my rage, my physical suffering, my marriage, experiences of intimacy and questioning, what it’s been like to claw my way back. I was stunned to find that in writing this book, I was forced to reckon with my own queer mother’s battle with addiction, and to recognize similarities in our suffering. My hope was that others who had incurred head trauma and were suffering from post-concussive disorder would feel less alone, more seen. What I learned as I wrote this book was just how invisible and ubiquitous the “silent epidemic” is: 3.8 million athletes, 415,000 veterans, 1.4 million concussions each year. One out of every two people experiencing houselessness has a head injury, usually acquired before they ever lost their home. Women experiencing domestic violence can sustain more head trauma than football players but are seldom diagnosed. In the criminal justice system, a person is seven times more likely to have a head injury—before they ever step foot in a prison cell. Such revelations inspired me to co-write “Professor X” with Marchell Taylor, former inmate and businessman and the co-author of Denver legislation that calls on neurological screenings before sentencing.
What made you want to tell this particular story?
I am a reluctant nonfiction writer, but this is a story that demands to be told. It began in 2019, when Roxane Gay chose the title work of SEX WITH A BRAIN INJURY as “Best of.” Someone wrote in the comments section, “A couple years out I’m trying to figure out how to make the hidden visible — so that my friends can meet the new me—” and this was when I realized that the hidden gift of injury is the ability to connect with others. With this work, as with all of my nonfiction, I strive to enact the teachings of Annie Dillard, who claims that the literary essay is a moral exercise that involves direct engagement with the unknown whether a foreign civilization or your own mind, and what matters in this is you. I hold even tighter onto the wisdom of bell hooks, who sees the confessional as prelude, the personal as a way to move beyond, to reach beyond the self. The work seeks to contribute to the vibrant and emerging canon of Creative Nonfiction that interrogates and expands representations of mental health, ability, and disability, particularly in relation to women and the LGBT community.
What’s capturing your imagination these days outside of reading and writing?
I am so excited to launch LitFriends, a podcast celebrating the love affair that is literary friendship! My co-host Lito Velázquez and I hope you’ll follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok & share with your lit bestie!
When we launched LitFriends, we could not have imagined how moving, beautiful, funny, and intimate these conversations would be. You will love these special stories from your favorite writers! From bad reviews, to sexy emails, miracles in bathtubs, and tender invitations in response to unfathomable grief—these connections remind us why we do this work, and who keeps us going.
Iconic Season One Lit Friends include Angela Flournoy & Justin Torres, Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly, Yiyun Li & Edmund White, Liz Moore & Asali Solomon, George Saunders & Paula Saunders, Lucy Corin & Deb Olin Unferth, George Saunders & Paula Saunders, CJ Hauser & Marie-Helene Bertino, and more!
So grab your bestie & come join us!
Listen wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, and check us out at Linktree. Episode 1 with Justin Torres & Angela Flournoy dropped on November 24, 2023 for Friendsgiving, and Episode 03 with Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly is now live.
Where can readers find you?
@aliontas on Instagram and Twitter
https://linktr.ee/litfriendspodcast
Thank you, Annie! Sex with a Brain Injury is out today. And her podcast is available on multiple podcast platforms.
Sex with a Brain Injury
For readers of Chloe Cooper Jones’s Easy Beauty and Meghan O’Rourke’s The Invisible Kingdom: a powerful and deeply personal narrative that sheds light on the experience of concussion
“This is an infuriatingly gorgeous, important book and Liontas is a singular writer.”
–Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
Annie Liontas, a genderqueer writer, moved to the United States from Greece when she was in kindergarten, not knowing a word of English. She navigated her way through the education system to become the first person in her family to go to college and eventually, to the prestigious MFA program at Syracuse University. In 2015, her debut novel Let Me Explain You was published by Scribner, receiving rave reviews. Then, in 2016, she was in a bike accident that left her with a “mild” concussion. Six months later, a heavy box fell on her head: another “mild” concussion. A few months later, a third “mild concussion.”
Here’s what a “mild” concussion meant: for years she couldn’t read, write, look at screens, work, sleep, exercise, enjoy food the way she once did, enjoy sex the way she once did. Once trivial tasks like locating a train at Penn Station or finding the right spice at the grocery store became insurmountable challenges. Like millions of others who experience traumatic brain injury, Annie was essentially told to sit in the dark and wait it out.
In SEX WITH A BRAIN INJURY: On Concussion and Recovery (Scribner; 1/16/24), Annie Liontas nimbly, movingly, sometimes hilariously conveys the myriad vulnerabilities she has experienced as a result of her injuries. She puts it all on the page: her fears, her rage, her physical suffering, her questioning, her shifting experiences of intimacy, identity, and relationships. More than anything, she describes with great tenderness the impact on her relationship with her wife and the disruptions to every level of intimacy and connection. Moving beyond the personal, she also explores the surprising legacy of brain injury, from Henry VIII to Harriet Tubman, weaving criticism, history, and philosophy to interrogate and expand representations of mental health, ability, and disability.
Concussion is a “silent epidemic”: 1.4 million concussions occur each year. One out of every two people experiencing homelessness has a head injury; women experiencing domestic abuse can sustain more head trauma than football players, but are diagnosed at an alarmingly low rate; in the criminal justice system, a person is 7 times more likely to have a head injury before they ever set foot in a jail cell. But readers do not need to be intimately familiar with traumatic brain injuries to appreciate the exquisite prose: ultimately SEX WITH A BRAIN INJURY is an exercise in compassion, for anyone who has suffered invisible illness, or been disappointed by their partner, or experienced the humbling and liberating power of surviving a crisis.
Author bio:
Annie Liontas is the genderqueer author of the novel Let Me Explain You and the coeditor of A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors. Their work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Gay Magazine, NPR, Electric Literature, BOMB, The Believer, Guernica, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, and other publications. A graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program, they are a professor of writing at George Washington University. Annie has served as a mentor for Pen City’s incarcerated writers and helped secure a Mellon Foundation grant on Disability Justice to bring storytelling to communities in the criminal justice system. They co-host the literary podcast LitFriends and live in Philadelphia.