Alumna Marin Sardy '13 to Release Debut Memoir 'The Edge of Every Day'

Nonfiction alumna Marin Sardy '13 releases her debut memoir, The Edge of Every Day, on May 21, 2019 through Penguin Random House.

Sardy’s fiercely intelligent memoir unflinchingly traces the path of the schizophrenia that runs in her family. Against the starkly beautiful backdrop of Anchorage, Alaska, where the author grew up, Sardy weaves a fearless account of the shapeless thief—the schizophrenia—that kept her mother immersed in a world of private delusion and later manifested in her brother, ultimately claiming his life.

“A shape-shifting debut memoir about a family’s coming to terms with schizophrenia . . . Essayist and critic Sardy delivers an extraordinarily ambitious and accomplished narrative about significant challenges. She chronicles the immense difficulties in trying to maintain a semblance of sanity while both her mother and brother suffer through schizophrenia that they refuse to acknowledge, with the rest of the family in various states of denial as well . . . Illuminat[es] mental illness from the inside out . . . Both powerful and disturbing . . . [An] impressive debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Sardy’s essays and criticism have appeared in Tin House, Guernica, The Rumpus, Fourth Genre, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere, as well as in two award-winning photography books, Landscape Dreams and Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby. She has also been the arts editor in chief at Santa Fe’s Santa Fean Magazine. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Sardy has twice had her work listed among the year’s notable essays in Best American Essays. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.