Acknowledgments

As is stated by many VCFA authors, this book would not exist without my experience at Vermont College of Fine Arts and, specifically, the talented teachers I had the honor of working with: Coe Booth, Mary Quattlebaum, Julie Larios and An Na. Thank you for loving Mira back when she was Lia and even farther back when she was me. Special thanks to Coe for her incredible support after graduation as well. Thank you to the Secret Gardeners, especially the wildly creative, smart and perceptive Laura Sibson, Laurie Morrison, Mary Winn Heider and Miriam McNamara. I cherish you. Special thanks to Melanie Crowder and Skila Brown for verse novel support, positivity, encouragement.

Sara Crowe, thank you for working so hard to bring this book to life and being so present during the hard times. Your energy is inspiring. Liza Kaplan, Editor Extraordinaire, you are perhaps the most conscientious person I’ve ever encountered (Mira would like to study under you). Thank you for all the brainstorming, all the nitpicking, all the pushing and the praise. Thank you for that day on the phone, when you told me you were meant to find my story. One of the best days of my life; I owe you the moon. Much thanks to the Philomel constellation: Michael Green, Talia Benamy, Kristin Smith, Semadar Megged, Cindy Howle, John Searcy and Ryan Sullivan. Your hard work means so much to me. This book should have all your names on the cover.

Thank you to my writer friends named Dan: Dan Torday, you are the one who first got on me to go back to school, and your long-standing belief in me means so much; Dan Boehl, thank you for alternating challenge/support, for TIE in the face of TFO and for all those mixtapes. Thanks to my many “Philly mom friends” who listened to me talk on and on about this process and who loved my family and me through it; you know who you are. Special thanks to Jenna Conley for lending her HIV expertise to the story. Lots of love always to my badass friend and glassblowing expert, Erica Rosenfeld. And to Vanessa Brown Sughrue, for being such a caring friend and a good listener. Thanks to Beth Ann Corr, for being an amazing acupuncturist; you helped me through some stuck moments. And Lisa Marchiano, for empowerment.

This book was a long time coming. A long, long time ago it was a memoir. Some of the images included I can trace back to poems I wrote during undergrad at Kenyon. Although the book was once a true story, it is now, absolutely, a work of fiction. That being said, I thought so much about my own childhood/high school experience as I wrote this, and the experience of losing my own father to AIDS. I thought so much about some people (even though none appear directly in the book) who journeyed alongside me during that time and who, as I wrote, would poke their heads into my office sometimes, say hi, hold my hand, shed a tear. For this, I thank the memories of my own star cluster: Kiki Samuels, Freya Wallace, Kendall Wishnick Adams, Jana Gold Kleiman, Eliza Nemser, Laura Kleger, David Hong, Jeremy Kleiner, Xander Charity, Matt Ross, Josh Melnick. And David Lowy, thanks for being so nice to me back then. Thanks to the Longacre summer program and the friends I made there, specifically Susan Smith, for teaching me the power of openness. Thanks so much to my Nana, Lillian Allen, for teaching me what it means to love unconditionally. Endless thanks to Joan McAllister for taking such good care of me my whole life. I thank my mother, Mariette Pathy Allen, for supporting me throughout this process and lovingly answering so many hard questions. A thousand million tons of love to my best, taller and better-than-me little sister, Julia Steele Allen. You are as precious as you are courageous. I love you 4eva. To Jon Jensen, my heroic, dashing husband, who literally sat through twenty thousand sessions of me reading this book out loud, I do not have words for you. I do not know how to thank you enough for supporting me tirelessly. I love you. And my darling, amazing children, Lily and Tate: I love you all the time, you are my best, best ones. You guys are the absolute coolest. I want to be both of you when I grow up.