Body Weather

A visceral work of reported essays, masterfully braided with narrative research. Lorraine Boissoneault tells the story of living with chronic illness at a time when the planet is in a state of dire suffering. Climate change is bringing more hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, fires and landslides. How will a distressed planet affect stressed, ill or disabled bodies? In poetic and haunting prose, Boissoneault unearths intersections between her unique experience living with illness, while also illuminating universal questions lodged within all of us: How do we learn to live with discomfort? “How do we seek refuge from our own bodies, from weather that wraps itself around the world?” The Lukas Prize will enable the author to travel from her home base in Chicago to the Saguenay fjord in northern Quebec, to Death Valley in California and to Australia’s outback to complete reporting for the book. Body Weather is a singular work of literary reportage, a firsthand, intimate account drawing profound connections between the body and the planet.', Judges' Citation, 2024 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award

'Body Weather is an astonishment—a dazzling kaleidoscope of natural and personal history crackling with intelligence. Lorraine Boissoneault’s expansive vision presents both the awesome wonders and delicate frailties of nature, from the cosmos to the tender, tenacious heart. Oceanic in scope and breathtaking as a lightning storm, Body Weather vibrates with the pain and rage of living in a female body on a sick planet. Lorraine Boissoneault is a force of nature.', Sarah McColl, author of Joy Enough

'I’m amazed at how seamlessly Lorraine Boissoneault dances between the physiological and geological, between the personal and universal, between grief and hope. From grand sweeps of scientific history to poignant slices of memoir, Body Weather connects the challenges of the planet to the trials of the body and dares to imagine a future where we address both with humanity. It’s a singular, stunning book.', Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World

'Lorraine Boissoneault’s Body Weather refuses the distance between personal collapse and planetary collapse, insisting, with unflinching honesty, that these crises are one and the same. She writes from inside a sick body on a sick planet and, in doing so, creates something far more urgent than forecast or diagnosis: a reckoning. This book doesn’t offer easy answers, but it offers something better—a way of seeing our shared vulnerability as the starting point for understanding what’s breaking and what still might be saved.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​', Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias

'Lorraine Boissoneault elegantly twines our unstable bodies and ravaged planet and demands an upwelling of care for us all. Body Weather is revelatory, enraging, and nothing less than a paean to survival.', Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches

'“A timely and thought-provoking ode to discovery and recovery.”

“Deeply moving.”

“The book is both a beacon of hope for readers with chronic conditions as well as an obituary for a planet and a body irrevocably altered by pollution, global warming, and autoimmune responses to environmental factors.”

“Recommend this haunting, heartbreaking, yet still hopeful title to readers who like to feel everything they read.”', Library Journal