“Mary Cappello[’s] inventive, associative taxonomy of discomfort . . . [is] revelatory indeed.” — , author of and “A wonderful, multi-layered piece of writing, with all the insight of great cultural criticism and all the emotional pull of memoir. A fascinating book.” — Without awkwardness we would not know grace, stability, or balance. Yet no one before Mary Cappello has turned such a penetrating gaze on this misunderstood condition. Fearlessly exploring the ambiguous borders of identity, she mines her own life journeys—from Russia, to Italy, to the far corners of her heart and the depths of a literary or cinematic text—to decipher the powerful messages that awkwardness can transmit. is the author of four books of literary nonfiction, including , which was a bestseller, which won a Book of the Year Award and an Independent Publishers Prize, and Professor of English at the Universityof Rhode Island, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island and Lucerne-in-Maine, Maine.