Lora Lafayette's writing has appeared in such publications as Plazm Magazine, The Buckman Journal, and Pen & Ink. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with Finn, who purrs. She still travels the world, though not quite so frenetically as she used to.

A Private Artifact of Public Madness: Possums Run AmokI suppose that Possums Run Amok is a memoir. But it reads more like some combination of notebook, fable, and primal scream. It is the fastest book I have ever read. One can picture the author’s fingers blurrily tapping her keyboard, putting down her mostly generalized memories as quickly as she can type, never pausing long to occupy any one moment, scene, or sensation—author as sheepdog, chasing and nipping at a pack that outnumbers her absolutely.Lafayette tears though 1970s pre-teen delinquency more outrageous and idiosyncratic than that of Sable Starr or Lori Maddox, to penniless following of non-penniless strangers in country after country, to multiple years of institutionalization. In Possums Run Amok, Lafayette dashes through each stage, her younger self insisting on the joyous particularity of the horror that populates each of her days.The highs are so high that, as Lora’s friends leave and her physical and mental health deteriorate, their loss is like a punch in the sternum. However, the fierce breeziness is replaced by an equally forthright account of encroaching madness and confinement.Possums Run Amok occupies an important position on an unsteady precipice between private and public. Its events and perceptions—plenty wild enough to warrant the veil of secrecy—carry the power of thoughts that impose themselves unbearably on a person’s private consciousness. Yet the real power of Possums Run Amok is not that it brings private events into public light, but that it allows the throb of one person’s privacy to reshape the privacy of anyone fortunate enough to read it.–Robert Fromberg, LA Review of Books, April 2022

Lora Lafayette's writing has appeared in such publications as Plazm Magazine, The Buckman Journal, and Pen & Ink. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with Finn, who purrs. She still travels the world, though not quite so frenetically as she used to.

A Private Artifact of Public Madness: Possums Run AmokI suppose that Possums Run Amok is a memoir. But it reads more like some combination of notebook, fable, and primal scream. It is the fastest book I have ever read. One can picture the author’s fingers blurrily tapping her keyboard, putting down her mostly generalized memories as quickly as she can type, never pausing long to occupy any one moment, scene, or sensation—author as sheepdog, chasing and nipping at a pack that outnumbers her absolutely.Lafayette tears though 1970s pre-teen delinquency more outrageous and idiosyncratic than that of Sable Starr or Lori Maddox, to penniless following of non-penniless strangers in country after country, to multiple years of institutionalization. In Possums Run Amok, Lafayette dashes through each stage, her younger self insisting on the joyous particularity of the horror that populates each of her days.The highs are so high that, as Lora’s friends leave and her physical and mental health deteriorate, their loss is like a punch in the sternum. However, the fierce breeziness is replaced by an equally forthright account of encroaching madness and confinement.Possums Run Amok occupies an important position on an unsteady precipice between private and public. Its events and perceptions—plenty wild enough to warrant the veil of secrecy—carry the power of thoughts that impose themselves unbearably on a person’s private consciousness. Yet the real power of Possums Run Amok is not that it brings private events into public light, but that it allows the throb of one person’s privacy to reshape the privacy of anyone fortunate enough to read it.–Robert Fromberg, LA Review of Books, April 2022

Lora Lafayette's writing has appeared in such publications as Plazm Magazine, The Buckman Journal, and Pen & Ink. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with Finn, who purrs. She still travels the world, though not quite so frenetically as she used to.

A Private Artifact of Public Madness: Possums Run AmokI suppose that Possums Run Amok is a memoir. But it reads more like some combination of notebook, fable, and primal scream. It is the fastest book I have ever read. One can picture the author’s fingers blurrily tapping her keyboard, putting down her mostly generalized memories as quickly as she can type, never pausing long to occupy any one moment, scene, or sensation—author as sheepdog, chasing and nipping at a pack that outnumbers her absolutely.Lafayette tears though 1970s pre-teen delinquency more outrageous and idiosyncratic than that of Sable Starr or Lori Maddox, to penniless following of non-penniless strangers in country after country, to multiple years of institutionalization. In Possums Run Amok, Lafayette dashes through each stage, her younger self insisting on the joyous particularity of the horror that populates each of her days.The highs are so high that, as Lora’s friends leave and her physical and mental health deteriorate, their loss is like a punch in the sternum. However, the fierce breeziness is replaced by an equally forthright account of encroaching madness and confinement.Possums Run Amok occupies an important position on an unsteady precipice between private and public. Its events and perceptions—plenty wild enough to warrant the veil of secrecy—carry the power of thoughts that impose themselves unbearably on a person’s private consciousness. Yet the real power of Possums Run Amok is not that it brings private events into public light, but that it allows the throb of one person’s privacy to reshape the privacy of anyone fortunate enough to read it.–Robert Fromberg, LA Review of Books, April 2022