Coming Fall 2022: Kinesiophobia 

Meghan Guidry’s newest book Kinesiophobia will be published in Fall 2022 by Thera Books. Called “dazzling and genre-defying,” Kinesiophobia fuses memoir, speculative fiction and poetic precision to tell a story of one family’s intergenerational trauma, haunted inheritances, and wounds that take centuries to heal. 

“We at Thera Books are thrilled to be publishing this powerful book,” says poet and Thera Books founder Donnelle McGee. “Meghan’s writing is captivating and evocative, and her voice is singular and lyrical. Her unwavering focus on grief - how she draws readers into her own, breaks herself open, and in doing so creates spaces of mutual recognition and healing - feels especially vital right now as we collectively grapple with shared grief and loss from the pandemic and the world at large.” 

Both a novella in verse and speculative memoir, Kinesiophobia asks where tragedy begins and how it is passed down through generations. Guidry traces her family’s history, from the distant past of the Acadian expulsion and the legend of the Rougarou to Hurricane Katrina and her own father’s death, to explore why parallel tragedies happen across centuries. Through sharp, obsessive snapshots of key inflection points - the sinking of the Duke Williams, the breaking of the levees, the diagnosis of a tumor - Guidry turns a patchwork of family history into a dazzling mythology to explore how distant events shape our lives and our destinies - and what it means to break free from those patterns.

“I wanted to get to the emotional truth of loss, the immensity of it, the way it felt like everything in my past and in the universe at large had conspired toward the singular loss of my father,” Meghan explains. “I’m overjoyed to be working with Thera Books, and honored to be joining the incredible group of authors who already have books with this press. Working with a press that is so committed to its authors and that believes in this book so deeply is a dream come true.” 

Publication is set for Fall 2022, with an audio book release planned concurrently. Pre-orders are expected to open in July, 2022.

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Learn more about Thera Books and their titles on their website.