About The Book
In unflinching yet hopeful prose, this debut essay collection explores the most animal parts of our human nature. Discussions of various creatures in the natural world serve as portals to the painful realities Kirsten Reneau confronts in the process of breaking—and remaking—a home. Honest in their descriptions of sexual assault and its traumatic effects, these essays are at once clinical and lyrical reflections on the ways that desire can permeate our lives for better or worse, as well as how it can be channeled into a lifegiving force for women in a world often hostile to their basic needs. Sensitive Creatures ultimately is a story of darkness, resilience, and the light that still manages to crack through.
Advance Praise
““Sensitive Creatures is an emotional journey, taking readers through personal experiences where nothing is held back and the experiences of humanity are poetically bound to the animal world. Kirsten Reneau's essays are captivating, standing vigil over the past and showing readers how the world can be cruel, or beautiful, or often both.”
— Leah Myers, Author of Thinning Blood
“When Kirsten Reneau takes us to the extremes of experience, she points at what someone else might consider trivial (a cicada, bar bathroom graffiti, a coffee filter), transforming observation into insight. Sensitive Creatures is an incredible accomplishment. I’m already excited to reread it.”
— Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl and winner of the Ohioana Book Award
“Reneau’s beautiful, at times harrowing, debut collection of essays draws insights from nature as it chronicles her coming of age in a world that feels teeming with both danger and wonder. With poetic vigilance and formal experimentation, these essays are by turns playful and devastating. Yes, these pages hold their fair share of pain and grief but ultimately, like her cicadas and newts and hummingbirds, Reneau’s writing finds sustaining connection in the world—both grounded and exhilarating.”
— Anne Gisleson, author of The Futalitarians
Reviews + Interviews
“Reneau opens herself wide and invites us to look inside, to recognize the familiar, as healing and scarring are not just human conditions, but animal and environmental conditions….Every essay in some way brings Reneau back to nature, to the natural world. Precarious. Evolving. Surviving. Building temporary houses. Building a new temporary house. And again. Floating. Burrowing.”
“By being vulnerable with her own faults and flaws, Reneau leaves a door cracked open in every essay, allowing the reader to access the sliver of hope that shines through and continues to persevere no matter what devastation has occurred or is yet to come.”
If you’ve had any toe-dip in girlhood, if you know the not enough/too much of living inside a being of want that is unwanted, this book is for you.