Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Debut Lesbian Fiction.
"The Beautifully Worthless is an outrageous act of kindness."Eileen Myles
"She's insanely talented, it's mad. The Beautifully Worthless crisscrosses the USA, like Close to the Knives, like Kerouac, desperately seeking out everything occluded and driven, a frenzy of seeking frozen into poetry."Kevin Killian
"Ali Liebegotts books evoke a life-affirming sensation that comes from embracing the pendular. Her ability to hit the right tone is scientific, almost violent in its precisiona single word or observation, well-placed, can have a reader crying or laughing aloud."Evan Karp, Bomb Magazine
A runaway waitress leaves her lover, grabs her dog, and hits the highway. Ali Liebegott maps her travels in a series of hilarious and heartbreaking letters to the girl she left behind, and some of the most exquisite poetry written about love, heartache, and madness.
Review
"Most comparisons to Jack Kerouac induce eye-rolls, but you figure that the Beatific City Lights wouldn't print such a thing unless they meant it. The Beautifully Worthless is a subverted road story about a runaway waitress who leaves her lover and hits the road with her dog. She maps her travels in letters to the girl she left behind and poetry about love and heartache."SF Weekly
Review
"
The Beautifully Worthless is a genre-smudging, American Mythos-screwing hell of a book. Never falling into the twee or succumbing to the snarky, Liebegott's wit, astuteness and assured poetics come together to create this marvel of empathy and mercy, decency and heart; it affirms the possibility that hope is tenable and that living is worth the life itself. This is an atlas for every queerly vagabond soul, a pillow book for the hopelessly heartweary."
Justin Chin"Ali Liebegott's The Beautifully Worthless is a mixed-genre tour de force, a classic yet subverted road story, an original and fierce claim on this country, and the generator of an unusual, moving canon. It's saturated with Liebegott's signature gifts: a peerless sense of humor and a capacity to bear witness to and articulate the darkest corners of fear and despair. I stand in awe of Liebegott's talent and heart. She is one of the best we've got."Maggie Nelson
"Her witty, compassionate voice haunts me like no other."Joan Larkin
"Most comparisons to Jack Kerouac induce eye-rolls, but you figure that the Beatific City Lights wouldn't print such a thing unless they meant it. The Beautifully Worthless is a subverted road story about a runaway waitress who leaves her lover and hits the road with her dog. She maps her travels in letters to the girl she left behind and poetry about love and heartache."SF Weekly
"[Liebegott] writes with grace and empathy and with a whole 'lotta' heart."Amos Lassen
Synopsis
A tender, tragic, absurd and highly original voice, Liebegott's award-winning epic road poem has been compared to Kerouac and Wojnarowicz.
About the Author
Ali Liebegott is a lesbian American author whose work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her first book, The Beautifully Worthless, won the Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction. Liebegott is a recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for Arts. She taught creative writing at UC San Diego and currently lives in San Francisco. Her debut novel entitled The IHOP Papers was published in early 2007 and was awarded a Lambda Literary award for Women's Fiction, a Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, and was a finalist for a Stonewall Prize. She has toured the U.S. extensively with Sister Spit's Ramblin' Road Show and is represented by The Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.