ERIN KHAR reads from her debut memoir STRUNG OUT in Los Angeles

ERIN KHAR reads from her debut memoir STRUNG OUT
(Park Row Books)
Growing up in Los Angeles as the only child of divorced parents, Erin Khar, often consumed with loneliness, looked for an escape from the pervasive belief that she wasn't enough—not enough to keep her parents together or her mother from depression—and yet, she never shared with anyone this private sadness. Instead, she hid behind the façade of a perfect childhood filled with good grades, a popular group of friends, and horseback riding. By the time she was thirteen, the act becoming too difficult to keep up, and she started experimenting with her grandmother's expired valium, quickly followed by heroin. The drug allowed her to feel the calm she was missing from her life and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn't understand. Heroin, while keeping her from other forms of self-harm, became the addiction that destroyed her.
Advance Praise for
:
"This is a brutally honest and yet tender look inside opioid addiction. Khar pulls aside the mask of an addict, and neither self-pitying or blaming, delves deep into the personal, social and physical reasons for addiction."— Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder and The Butterfly Girl
"I love Erin Khar's work with my whole heart and body. The way she uses her own life's struggles, her gift of language, her impossibly large sense of empathy and compassion, to make you feel less alone, is a rare thing in this world. You don't want to put this book down as if it is a piece of your own heart, and my guess is that it will become just that."—Jennifer Pastiloff, author of
"I love Erin's unusual use of language. My air was caught in my throat a little bit and I knew I was in the company of a writer who is willing to take risks, who knows what it is like to NEED to take risks to get the story right. That makes what she is doing ART."—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of
"Erin is a hauntingly beautiful writer with the kind of story you think has nothing to do with you but has everything to do with you. She transcends her specifics and speaks to anyone who has ever fought hard to stay in the game of being a human being. She is a true inspiration."—Kimberlee Auerbach Berlin, author of
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Literary & Books