I am stirred by the poems in this book – it is a sharp, unflinching collection of poems about girlhood, wonder, casual everyday violence. Everything true – and disappointing. Memories that we recognize. Everything tragic, stunning, raw.

Ground-breaking and original poems that candidly face the complications of the female experience, that of negotiating an existence in a world that both excited and terrifies. Gatwood’s writing unearths some of my deepest fears as a woman … These poems – cautious, direct, brave – made me face uncomfortable truths, like all great poetry should.

Olivia writes about the women who were forgotten and the men who got off too easy with an empathy and anger that yanked every emotion on the spectrum out of me. Her words can ‘make a crop top out of anything,’ and make you laugh, cry, and walk around the block three times, thinking ‘How did she do that?’ Imagine our luck, getting to live in the age of Olivia Gatwood. Goddamn.

Life of the Party is an electrifying collection of poems about the agonies and ecstasies of being a young woman.

Olivia Gatwood is a revolution of woman, a flurry of insight harnessing the language of self-assessment and acceptance. Her poems invite a contemporary understanding of sexuality and the feminine form, feminism and inclusion, intersection and advocacy. Her metaphors and images are both breath and being. This book is an offering to the silenced for firepower and reflection. A haystack of hallelujahs reside in these pages.