The Only Way Out Is Through: Essays by Shinkle, Katie Jean

Katie Jean Shinkle

The Only Way Out Is Through: Essays

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The Only Way Out is Through chronicles the way in which we archive the Other in queer relationships: Through images, through memories, through narrative, and...

The Only Way Out is Through chronicles the way in which we archive the Other in queer relationships: Through images, through memories, through narrative, and through recollection. In the midst of queer heartbreak and the exploration of desire-gone-wrong, fueled by addiction, reckoning of identity, and unearthing of secrets that keep us unseen, this chapbook-length essay follows a slowly unraveling break-up. As the narrator and the Other traverse the painstaking journey of realizing the relationship is over, the essay explores how secrets make us sick, how remaining unseen keeps us repressed, and how love sometimes is not enough to save the other person from themselves. Following the break-up to its end reveals more than simply an ending, but a freedom and new beginning for the narrator as the question gets answered: How does one make it through the other side of devastating loss? The answer is: The only way out is through.

The Only Way Out Is Through is a hauntingly elegiac meditation on the unyielding desire to start over."

-eileen elizabeth espinoza, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World

KATIE JEAN SHINKLE's books and chapbooks include The Only Way Out Is Through: Essays (YesYes Books, 2026), Transference (Gasher Press, 2025), and Tannery Bay (coauthored with Steven Dunn, FC2, 2024). Other work can be found in or is forthcoming from Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance (Sarabande Books), American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Nation, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. Awarded fellowships and residencies from Lambda Literary and Ragdale, she serves as co-poetry editor of DIAGRAM.

Genre
Self-Help
Pages
42
Publisher
YesYes Books
Publication Date
Content
ISBN
9781946303127

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