In an intimate, courageous, and transformative collection, 26 girls and women of all ages share poems and stories exploring the ups and downs of menstruation, from first period to post-menopause.
The award-winning anthology awfully hilarious series returns with its second installment, period pieces, featuring that most ubiquitous "time of the month." These short pieces of prose and poetry illuminate our collective fascination, trepidation and shame around the biology of periods: from pre-pubescence and monthly cycles, to perimenopause, hot flashes, and menopause.
Told in cycles, awfully hilarious: period pieces explores menstruation through feminine (but not always female) archetypal milestones of the maiden, mother, and crone-and the many identities we embody in between.
In the Spring sections, the collection focuses on stories of first periods and youth on the cusp, as well as the follicular phase between flow and ovulation. Summer revels in ovulation, fertility (as well as birth control), and pregnancy. Fall represents menstruation's luteal phase, when many experience greater pain and distress, and finally, Winter takes readers to the very edge and end, with perimenopause and menopause.
Regardless of gender expression or experience, period pieces is for everyone: fervently and courageously sharing a human experience often forced to secrecy and solitude. In this stunning collection, readers can join the chorus: We've been there. We've got you.
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awfully hilarious is an anthology series of poems, short stories, and essays that tackle social taboos by talking openly about them. With great camaraderie and heart, contributors share the awkward and devastating stories that-with time and experience-become the badges of honour we share to affirm we are never truly alone in this world. Learn more at awfullyhilarious.com.
Author Biography:
This series began as a joke, amongst friends. Heather Hendrie then "caught the tiger by the tail", turning the project into a best-selling, published book that won the Canadian Book Club Award in 2023 for anthologies. A creative radical who's spent years fumbling through it all and figuring it out as she goes (pretty much like the rest of us), Heather has travelled around the world on a shoestring and a whim, and spent waaaaayyy too many hours lying in bed alone (or on the toilet in the bar....) swiping through to the end of the Tinder-verse.Originally from Guelph, Ontario, Heather has lived in Cusco, Costa Rica, California, Colorado, and the Canadian Rockies before landing in her coastal British Columbia home. She's got at least 13 jobs under her belt, from golf-course beverage cart sales, to in-flight air safety professional, touring film festival host, international bike tour guide and a starring role as Ms. Frizzell look-alike, touring buses through landfills in Calgary, Alberta.What she's learned along the way (stumbling from one disaster to another) could fill a book (and so she has). Heather has also used these life experiences to become a clinical counsellor, and through that work and her humble, intimate writing style, she reaches out a hand to the rest of us, as we all simply Bumble our way through, together.This project wouldn't have happened had two of Heather's best friends not scooped her up after a particularly bad date-to console her, and provide the same support to others, in literary form. Katherine Matthews is a freelance writer, editor, and writing instructor in Columbus, Ohio. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Columbus Monthly for over thirty years, and her creative nonfiction earned a grant award from the Ohio Arts Council. A former managing editor at PageSpring Publishing, Katherine also served as editor-in-chief of Flip the Page, Thurber House's Teen Literary Journal for ten years. She regularly teaches writing classes for children and adults, as well as producing and performing interactive mysteries for young writers. Lindsey Harrington is a Nova Scotian writer with Newfoundland roots. This year she shortlisted for the Fiddlehead's Creative Nonfiction Prize and longlisted for CBC's Nonfiction Prize. Her current projects include a short story collection about breakups, an un-motherhood memoir, and a novel about lonely people, featuring a seagull named Rigby.
