Detailing Trauma: A Poetic Anatomy, by Arianne Zwartjes, will become available Sept. 15 from the Sightline Books series of the University of Iowa Press.

In a series of linked lyric essays, Detailing Trauma explores in vivid, sometimes graphic, detail the many types of wounds from which the human body and spirit may suffer—and heal. Mapping the diseases and injuries that can afflict the body, the author asks how we can continue to live and love in the face of the great potential for suffering and loss.

Zwartjes names each section of the book for body parts or processes, then juxtaposes the functions and failures of human anatomy with experiences in her own life and those of people she knows and loves, meticulously stitching together life’s fractures and ruptures. Each essay offers glimpses of hope and reasons for living with the likelihood of chaos and pain, reasons for choosing to love despite the risks.

Detailing Trauma explores the wondrous anatomy and physiology of the human body, a geography of our human frailties—and also our wealth, as humans, of love and hope and the capacity for meditative thought.

Terese Svoboda, the author of Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, commented, “A stunning meditation on the body we live in, Detailing Trauma wraps love tight to life, insisting we prepare for the departure of both."

Zwartjes, director of the wilderness program at the United World College, teaches for the Wilderness Medicine Institute as well as for the National Outdoor Leadership School. Her previous works include Disem(body), The Surfacing of Excess, and (Stitched) A Surface Opens: Essays.

Her new book will be available at bookstores or from the UI Press, 800-621-2736 or www.uiowapress.org. Customers in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa may order from Eurospan Group at www.eurospanbookstore.com.

Sightline Books: The Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction, the series edited by Patricia Hampl and Carl H. Klaus, specializes in exceptional literary nonfiction. The titles in this series range from cultural commentary, nature writing, and historical inquiry to meditation, memoir, and narratively or thematically linked personal essays by emerging as well as established authors.