"If Nick Flynn's Stay is a self-portrait, it is a self-portrait of
our planet, of our contemporary consciousness in an undeniably wounded
era. I think of it as an artist's notebook, a prayer book, a monumental
compendium of what it means to stay alive." -Mary Ruefle
With Stay, acclaimed poet, artist, and bestselling memoirist Nick
Flynn presents a self-portrait via a constellation of topics that have
circled his work. Ranging from the impact of suicide and homelessness to
addiction, political engagement, and the vital power of artistic
friendships, Stay is a mixed-media retrospective that shows nothing is
created in isolation.
Mirroring Flynn's life, this work of visual and literary memoir is
populated by examples of his collaborations since the 1980s with such
luminaries as the photographers Amy Arbus and Catherine Opie, composer
Guy Barash, actor Robert De Niro, cartoonist Josh Neufeld, author Sarah
Sentilles, filmmaker Paul Weitz, and artists John Baldessari, Marilyn
Minter, and Bill Shuck. In Flynn's refusal to conform to narrative or
the safety of his own perspective, Stay grasps for an essential truth,
an answer to what art, in the end, can and cannot reflect.
