The latest book from Portland mainstay and Antiquated Future favorite, Martha Grover, author or The End of My Career (Perfect Day Publishing) and the long-running (20+ years!) Somnambulist zine series.

Sorry I Was Gone by Martha Grover is an illustrated lyric memoir that maps the narratives and myths of womanhood, chronic illness, and reality-TV depictions of The American Dream. Through short, incisive pieces, Grover hangs diet culture, classism, and ableism out to dry. Original illustrations visually traverse the lyric, the myth, the joke, the medical pro/con list, and the survival kit with Grover’s signature folk flair. Sorry I Was Gone exposes to absurdity the arbitrary metrics by which we judge our lives.

80 pages, trade paperback, full-color. ISBN 978-0-578-88096-9

 “Always engaged with the world and incisive, Grover’s latest must-have collection continues to explore the personal in ways that are universal, passionate, and urgent.” - Jeff Vandermeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation

“Sorry I Was Gone is astonishing. I’ve said in the past that Martha Grover is my favorite living writer. Well, take that same statement and double it.” - Bud Smith, author of Double Bird

“A new book from Martha Grover is like a treat waiting to be devoured. Her natural, idiosyncratic storyteller’s voice is deceptively casual, but her insights linger in the imagination forever. She should be famous.” - Emily Gould, author of Perfect Tunes and Friendship

“The table of contents alone in this exceptional collection is everything I ever want in a book. Whether she’s observing bad tv, personality tests, dogs, gods, pain or painkillers, Martha Grover wields precision and humor to communicate what it means to live and try not to die. This is the transcendent prose of a writer raucously surviving.” - Amy Kurzweil, author of Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir