About the Book

Winner of the 2019 Nonfiction Prize, selected by Paul Lisicky
Longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

In Skull Cathedral, Melissa Wiley pulls stories from the vestigial remnants of the creatures we were or could have become. The appendix, pinky toes, tonsils, male nipples, wisdom teeth, and coccyx are starting points through which Wiley explores exaltation, eroticism, grief, and desire. Using the slow evolution and odd disintegration of vestigial organs to enter the braided stories of the lives we establish for ourselves, the people we grieve, and the mysteries of youth, memory, and longing, Wiley’s lens is deeply feminist and compassionate.

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Melissa Wiley grew up on a small farm in Indiana. She earned her Master’s in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University in Chicago, where she works as a freelance writer and editor. Primarily a writer of creative nonfiction, she is also the author of the personal essay collection Antlers in Space and Other Common Phenomena […]

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