Pathemata, Or, the Story of My Mouth

***Longlisted for the 2025 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay***

Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth is an experiment in interiority written in the pandemic studio. Something of a companion piece to 2009's Bluets, Pathemata merges a pain diary chronicling a decade of jaw pain with dreams and dailies, eventually blurring the lines between embodied, unconscious, and everyday life.

In scrupulously distilled prose, Pathemata offers a tragicomic portrait of a particularly unnerving and isolating moment in recent history, as well as an abiding account of how it feels to inhabit a mortal body in struggle to connect with others. Formally inspired by Hervé Guibert'sThe Mausoleum of Lovers, and conceptually guided by Gilles Deleuze's notion of artist as symptomologist, Pathematais yet another urgent innovation from Maggie Nelson in the art of life-writing.