Deborah A. Lott’s memoirs, essays, and reportage have been published in the Rumpus, Salon, the Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellingham Review, Black Warrior Review, Cimarron Review, the Los Angeles Times, StoryQuarterly, the Good Men Project, the nervous breakdown, and many other places. Her family’s legacy of hypochondria was featured on NPR’s This American Life. Her first book, In Session: the Bond between Women and their Therapists, offered an unprecedented look at psychotherapy from the perspective of clients interviewed by the author. Her essays have been thrice named as “notables of the year” by Best American Essays. She teaches creative writing and literature at Antioch University, Los Angeles, where she serves as faculty advisor to Two Hawks Quarterly.com. She lives with her husband, Gary Edelstone, in Los Angeles.
Don’t Go Crazy Without Me tells the tragicomic coming of age story of a girl who grew up under the seductive sway of her outrageously eccentric father. He taught her how to have fun; he also taught her to fear food poisoning, other children’s infectious diseases, and the contaminating propensities of the world at large. Alienated from her emotionally distant mother, the girl bonded closely with her father and his worldview. When he plunged from neurotic to full-blown psychotic, she nearly followed him. Sanity is not always a choice, but for the sixteen-year-old, decisions had to be made and lines drawn between reality and what her mother called her “overactive imagination.” She would have to give up beliefs carried by the infectious agent of her father’s love.
Saving herself would require an unconventional reading of Moby Dick, sexual pleasure in the body that had confounded her, and entry into the larger world of political activism as a volunteer in Robert F. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign. After attending his last stop at the Ambassador Hotel the night of his assassination, she would come to a new reckoning with loss and with engagement beyond the confines of her family. Ultimately, she would find a way to turn her grief into love.
ADVANCE PRAISE
“Deborah A. Lott’s Don’t Go Crazy Without Me is funny, horrifying, and heartbreaking—and often surprisingly, all three at once. It’s an astonishingly vivid book, and to read it is to be caught up, just as the writer was, in an impossible, crazy, misfit family. Through grace and nerve and will, Deborah learns that you can’t “screw nature,” or “stop time,” as her father tried to do, “but you could turn your grief into love.” This writer’s love for her deeply screwed-up family is unforgettable. As the best memoirs do, Don’t Go Crazy Without Me makes this writer’s story belong to all of us.”—Mark Doty, National Book Award Winner, author of the memoirs Firebird, Dog Years, Heaven’s Coast, and multiple volumes of poetry
“Don’t Go Crazy Without Me is an extraordinary book. Deborah A. Lott writes about everything—parents, children, bodies, illness, sex, writing—with a voice that is utterly clear and beautiful and funny and original. This is a book written with honesty that will both break your heart and enlarge it.”—Karen E. Bender, National Book Award Finalist, and author of A Town of Empty Rooms, Refund, and Like Normal People
“I was 16 when my father came home from his three-month stay in the mental hospital. I kept him company as he unpacked his suitcase and carefully, robotically, put away […]
A writer watched her husband become enthralled with AI technology, using it as an outlet for his own type of storytelling. But, ChatGPT’s — and his — penchant for violent […]
I have a recurrent dream in which my mother refuses to feed me. A long table displaying an array of delectable foods stands before me. This is food that my […]
My father’s hand shot up to his eyebrow, his finger poised there, as if he were about to stroke his brow. A gesture I’d always considered deeply imbued with his […]
DEBORAH A. LOTT is the author of the newly released Don’t Go Crazy Without Me: A Tragicomic Memoir. Lott writes of growing up in a family of leftist Jews, surrounded by […]
Deborah A. Lott, author of DON’T GO CRAZY WITHOUT ME was featured in Southern California News Group’s “Lit Up: your guide to books, writers and the literary life of SoCal.” […]
“I recently saw photos of Instagram influencers who had darkened their faces in a misguided show of solidarity for Black Lives Matter. Their efforts made me cringe and reminded me […]
Deborah A. Lott is the author of Don’t Go Crazy Without Me: A Tragicomic Memoir. She’s also the author of In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists.
Don’t Go Crazy Without Me tells the tragicomic coming of age story of a girl who grew up under the seductive sway of her outrageously eccentric father. He taught her […]
Kathryn interviews Creative Writing and Literature teacher at Antioch University, Los Angeles Deborah Lott, author of “Don’t Go Crazy Without Me.” More than just the tragicomic coming-of-age story of a […]
The meaning of the intriguing title of Lott’s courageous and endearing memoir snaps into sharp focus. “My father and I were not ordinary,” she writes. “Oh no, we had formed […]
This spring the formidable Deborah A. Lott—author, editor and college instructor—will be visiting the Unlocking Your Story workshop. She’ll be offering us an inside view of the creative process behind writing […]
It’s hard not to read every throat tickle and stuffy nose as a possible foreshadowing of COVID-19, but a recovering hypochondriac helps to walk us back and separate true symptoms, […]
Two weeks ago, when restaurants were still open, I watched a friend at lunch repeatedly spritz his hands with hand sanitizer. It seemed more compulsion than prudent protective measure. If […]
Deborah A. Lott’s Don’t Go Crazy Without Me: A Tragicomic Memoir is the story of a young woman’s coming of age and how she separates her own identity from her family’s. She […]
Reading Deborah Lott’s memoir of her dysfunctional upbringing feels like the literary equivalent of rubbernecking: her childhood was a series of trainwrecks, but somehow you can’t stop turning around to watch. […]
Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. Consider the cover image for Deborah A. Lott’s memoir Don’t Go Crazy Without Me (Red Hen Press): a chubby adult male dressed in blue velvet […]
