Some Answers Without Questions

The place I went to when I could not speak was also where my voice came from.
Part memoir, part manifesto, Some Answers Without Questions is a rigorous and lyrical work of self-investigation. Lavinia Greenlaw sets out to explore the impulse to say something, to write or sing, and finds herself confronting matters of presence and absence, anger and speechlessness, authority and permission. The result is important and timely, a spirited and vital exploration of what enables anyone - but a woman and an artist in particular - to create and respond even when not invited to do so. Some Answers Without Questions is the result of decades of answering questions that don't really matter - and not being asked the ones that do.

Lavinia Greenlaw has published three novels and six collections of poetry. Her two books of nonfiction are The Importance of Music to Girls and Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland. Her writing has appeared in frieze, the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, among other publications.