Twenty Square Feet of Skin

<div><b>Longlisted for the 2024 PEN America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay A pensive inquiry often breathtakingly beautiful and relatable into how and where and with whom we fit. -</b><i><b>Kirkus</b></i> The essays in <i>Twenty Square Feet of Skin</i> tell their stories through the body-encased as it is in that greatest of organs that membrane that protects the individual from the universe-as Megan Baxter's entrée to and home within the larger world that surrounds her. What does a tattoo mean? How can plastic surgery transform? What is the history of pedicures? Where does the mind wander on a long run? Through every example Baxter writes toward a greater understanding of how self-knowledge is forged through physical experiences. With the input of Prince Walt Whitman Don Johnson Andrew Wyeth Meriwether Lewis and others Baxter reflects on love identity and belonging by looking closely at her skin toenails and DNA. Playful wandering and deeply felt <i>Twenty Square Feet of Skin</i> weaves a strange rich tapestry of flesh and bones art and body skin and scar. In embracing the beauty and peril of physicality in crystalline detail Baxter asks us all to ponder what makes us human within these frail flawed powerful and wonderful bodies of ours.</div>