Pathemata : Or, The Story of My Mouth

Author: Maggie Nelson

Autobiography: literary

Published on 14 May 2026 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 80 pages
129 x 198 x 7mm | 66g

A profound and deeply personal exploration of pain, the body and loss by the beloved author of Bluets and The Argonauts'Full of warmth, wisdom and weirdness' JENNY MUSTARDThis is a dreamlike portrait of a body in struggle to connect with itself and others. As the narrator contends with chronic pain, and with a pandemic raging in the background, she sets out to examine the literal and symbolic role of the mouth in the life of a writer.

Pathemata recounts the narrator’s tragicomic search to alleviate her suffering, a search that eventually becomes a reckoning with various forms of loss – the loss of intimacy, the loss of her father and the loss of a pivotal friend and mentor. In exacting, distilled prose, her account blurs the lines between embodied, unconscious and everyday life.

Praise for Maggie Nelson‘I remember where I was when I read each of Maggie Nelson’s books in the same way I remember a place where I heard important news’ ANNE ENRIGHT‘Always brilliant’ GEOFF DYER‘Among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation’ OLIVIA LAING