Olivia Gatwood is the author of two poetry collections, New American Best Friend and Life of the Party. Her debut novel, Whoever You Are, Honey, was released in 2024, which she will also adapt for the screen. She has received international recognition for her poetry, writing workshops, and work as a Title IX Compliant educator in sexual assault prevention and recovery. Her performances have been featured on HBO, HuffPost, MTV, VH1, and the BBC, and more. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Foundation, Sundance Film Festival, Lambda Literary, and The Missouri Review. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she lives in California.
Life of the Party is largely a memoir, with memories of friendship as well as violence… [It] is also a meditation on Gatwood’s obsession with the true crime genre and her long-running fear of male violence. * New York Times * Life of the Party follows an arc from Gatwood’s own adolescence to adulthood... It also asks us to remember the stories of those most vulnerable, the women whose stories are too often ignored. * them.us * A reaction to, and a guttural cry against, the fear that shapes so many women’s lives. A book that is so very many different things: ferocious, melancholic, wistful, joyful, furious. * Culturefly * I am stirred by the poems in this book – it is a sharp, unflinching collection of poems about girlhood, wonder, casual everyday violence. Everything true – and disappointing. Memories that we recognize. Everything tragic, stunning, raw. * Yrsa Daley-Ward, author of The Terrible * Ground-breaking and original poems that candidly face the complications of the female experience, that of negotiating an existence in a world that both excited and terrifies. Gatwood's writing unearths some of my deepest fears as a woman ... These poems – cautious, direct, brave – made me face uncomfortable truths, like all great poetry should. * Elaine Feeney, author of How to Build a Boat *