Marie Manilla
Marie Manilla is the author of The Patron Saint of Ugly, Still Life with Plums, and Shrapnel. Her essays have appeared in Gargoyle, Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, Word Riot, Cossack Review, and elsewhere.
Featured Book
This Is a Game I Play
This Is a Game I Play chronicles Marie Manilla’s coming of age in a large Italian-Catholic family in Huntington, West Virginia, during the volatile 1960s and 1970s. Traveling into adulthood and from Texas, to Iowa, and back to West Virginia, Manilla is clear-eyed about the games she engaged in for attention or survival. She confronts her implicit biases and failings, her struggles navigating life with an anxiety disorder, and her ambivalence toward gender roles and expectations for women, such as being caregiver to aging parents, including one with dementia. Offering a unique archive of urban Appalachia, Manilla’s essays not only serve as reflections on the self and society but urge readers to consider the games they (un)knowingly play, too.
Meet Marie Manilla and get a copy of their book at the 2026 Kentucky Book Festival, Saturday, November 7, 2026, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.