Fever

A memoir made up of essay fragments, Fever, examines what it is to desire throughout all phases and states of life and being. Niziolek mixes plain language with poetic prose to interrogate trauma from domestic violence and illness, sexuality, and the different ways we can and do love despite these things. All of this comes together to create a keen focus on the many ways one can experience desire and its intersection with love.

"Shilo Niziolek’s Fever is a searing portrait of a kaleidoscopic life. It specifically describes the experiences of illness, grief, and eros and the mysterious ways these three conditions emerge like a Hydra as one. The prose shows how loss of one kind of body gives way to the creation of many new bodies: the dreaming body, the remembering body, the writing body (along with the texts the writing body makes), and the body that encounters the presence of absence most profoundly through feelings of love and desire for what lies just beyond reach, but also beyond her experience of pain. While it might be easy to categorize Fever as prose about illness—that it is, distinctly so—it is also a book about spiritual love and the many ways it manifests in our lives. It makes for a very poignant reading experience." -Jay Ponteri, author of Someone Told Me