30 Paragraphs: A Memoir

Shane McCrae

When I was young, I lived a nightmare, and was myself sometimes a nightmare. In 30 Paragraphs: A Memoir, I’ve tried to capture both the nightmare I lived and the nightmare I was–not punitively, to trap them, but to give them a new home.

“What I remember most distinctly is not any single act, but rather the sensation I felt, both empty and vast, as I watched what people did to me…I was comfortable in that vastness, and afraid of it, and I hated it, and yearned toward it, but not toward it, exactly, but toward people I thought might be familiar with it, as my grandfather seemed to be, and willing to inflict it.”

SHANE MCCRAE has published four books of poems, most recently The Animal Too Big to Kill. He teaches at Oberlin College and Spalding University, and has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship from the NEA. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.