Grace Lavery
is a writer, editor, and academic
Her latest book Personal Demons: Possession Narratives of Late Liberalism offers a new theory of the relation between sex, desire, and personhood, asking what we should make of the many contemporary instances when bodies seem to want different things from the consciousnesses within them.
Personal Demons is out October 20 from Duke University Press. Order now.
Praise for Personal Demons
Ann Pellegrini“A thrilling and utterly original book. Propulsively readable; Lavery’s luminous prose carries us through a captivating archive to reveal the surprising centrality of the trope of transsexual demonic possession to contemporary debates over embodiment, consciousness, agency, and the possibility of shared reality. When liberal rights claims have so spectacularly failed to defend trans kids (or trans adults), we need this book and Grace Lavery’s singular voice.”
Coauthor of Gender Without Identity
Praise for Personal Demons
Bill Brown“Grace Lavery is a daring, daunting, and dazzling writer. In Personal Demons she offers an utterly mesmerizing account of how transsexual subjectivity challenges neoliberal reason. Lavery writes a captivating and archly critical voice, and reads with uncanny sensitivity to both generic genealogy and textual detail. This is essential, urgent reading for anyone inhabiting the death throes of liberalism.”
Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture, University of Chicago
Praise for Personal Demons
Publishers Weekly“Provocative… Lavery thrills with unexpected choices of inquiry—like the ‘sadism beyond sexuality’ of revenge tickle porn—and with her willingness to leap headfirst into controversial topics…”
Praise for Pleasure & Efficacy
Jack Halberstam“Lavery demonstrates complete mastery of the essay form while disavowing mastery itself. Prepare to be vexed, outraged, seduced, and entertained. Prepare to enter an alternate reality with Lavery as your charming guide.”
Author of The Queer Art of Failure and Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire
Praise for Personal Demons
Jean-Thomas Tremblay“[Personal Demons is a] genius, devastating new book… Lavery is one of the greats. Few literary critics have conveyed such intellectual energy and integrity. I see Personal Demons everywhere. Has it taken hold of me?”
ASAP/Review
Other books by Grace Lavery
Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques
Princeton University Press (2023)
