Mulholland Dive

Vanessa Roveto is the author of two books of poetry, bodys and a women, and the novella The Valley (a void). She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles.

"I read this hypnotic poetry book in one sitting. At first, it hurt my feelings because I thought the narcissistic love interest was me. Then I realized it’s poetry and abstract and the character was many people and things. Or maybe it was all me and none of it was me, and either way it didn’t matter because the best books should hurt the writer’s lover’s feelings. So I wiped my tears and finished the book and realized it was absolutely perfect in every way, much like Vanessa Roveto herself." —Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain"Vanessa Roveto's Mulholland Dive is the newest entry into louche, brash, riveting Los Angeles poetry. '...a shopping list is a suicide note i’m performing.' Car crashes, smut, lesbian pillow talk...this isn't your grandma's poetry, but if it was, the world would be a better place. I am really impressed by this book." —Ben Fama, author of If I Close My Eyes"This is the singular kind of book that calls to me. Mulholland Dive is a thing of strange beauty, jagged, mournful, orgasmic, sonically exhilarating. Vanessa Roveto uses language like Francis Bacon, grinding it until image and emotion are, in her words, meat-soft. Each fragment touches on the chaos of death and self and desire in 21st century Los Angeles, in such a precise, visceral, original way, it makes Lacan's objet petit a textually attainable." —Alistair McCartney, author of The Disintegrations"Every line in Mulholland Dive sings a perfect note. A prismatic ode to the enduring enigmatic concept of Hollywood as a container for death and blondes, of lesbian heartbreak, of motherless and fatherless girls, of the human struggle to survive; Roveto has created a crucial work of art that contributes to our understanding of beauty as form, of womanhood, of what it means to love and hurt and be hurt." —Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me