Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional -- Isaac Fitzgerald - Hardcover

A TIME Best Book of the Summer
A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Memoir of the Season
A BookPage Most Anticipated Book of 2022
A Chicago Tribune Summer Pick
A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Books of Summer
A Buzzfeed Summer Book You Won't Be Able to Put Down
A BookRiot Best Summer Read of 2022

"Any fool can confess. It's the rare writer who reveals, and Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a heart on the sleeve, demons in check, eyes unblinking, unbearably sad, laugh-out-loud funny revelation."-MARLON JAMES, author of Moon Witch, Spider King

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents' lives-or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.

Fitzgerald's memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others.

Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.

Author: Isaac Fitzgerald
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 07/19/2022
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781635573978

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2021 pg. 21
Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2022
Publishers Weekly 04/18/2022
Library Journal 06/01/2022 pg. 154
Booklist 06/01/2022 pg. 14

About the Author
Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney's, he was most recently the co-host of BuzzFeed News' Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM and founding editor of BuzzFeed Books. He is co-author of Pen & Ink and Knives & Ink (winner of an IACP award), and the author of the picture book How to Be a Pirate and a forthcoming YA novel. He uses Twitter. He lives in New York.