PORTLAND, Oregon – October 11, 2022 – Glory Guitars, a new coming-of-age memoir by Gogo Germaine, is available nationally via University of Hell Press on this day, International Day of the Grrrl. The memoir on teen rebellion has been described as “if Howl had been written by a 15-year-old fanzine writer high on life, booze and illicit pharmaceuticals” (Louder Than War).
Reviews have compared it to movies like Kids and Thirteen, books like Neon Angel (Cherie Curie), and even Linda Jaivin’s sci-fi erotic novel, Rock’N’Roll Babes From Outer Space. More plentiful praise for Glory Guitars at the bottom of this email.
Gogo just returned from her NYC release at KGB, and will be doing another book launch in her hometown of Denver at Tattered Cover this evening followed by a punk after party at the Crypt.
For a review copy, or to set up an interview or in-person author event with Ms. Germaine, please contact Erin Barnes, ekbmedia@gmail.com. Gogo Germaine is also available to be an expert source for stories on punk, the `90s, rebellion, and more.
BOOK INFO
Published by University of Hell Press
October 11, 2022 | 298 Pages | Paperback
$19.95 | ISBN 978-1-938753-45-9
The book can be ordered at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, University of Hell Press, and everywhere books are sold. Limited edition colors are only available at the University of Hell Press site. Red will be available nationwide.
PRAISE FOR GLORY GUITARS
“A synesthetic fireball of beauty, a gut punch in every line, this is the kind of memoir full of gorgeously drawn characters and the wild passion of youthful misdeed that spawns a thousand attempts to live halfway up to the thrill of the original.”
– Alex DiFrancesco, author of All City and Transmutation.
“As smart and compelling as it is surprising and, ultimately, empowering.”
– John Wenzel, The Denver Post, Rolling Stone
“Lyrical and imaginative, homing in on intricate details and making them blossom like flowers.”
– Emily Ferguson, Westword
“If Howl had been written by a 15-year-old fanzine writer high on life, booze, and illegal pharmaceuticals.”
– Cazz Blase, Louder Than War
“Within the pages of Glory Guitars, many readers will recognize that longing for independence and individualism, whether or not they share Barnes’ particular punk-rock life experiences.
– Nick Hutchinson, Boulder Weekly
“Since the dawn of time, teenagers have observed the hypocrisy of adults, felt their own anger, and sense the death of the American Dream just around the corner.”
– John Moore, Denver Gazette
“Glory Guitars is a vulnerability manifesto that refuses to be ignored. … Heartbreaking and hilarious, all with the perfect soundtrack of sorrow and rage to boot, Germaine is brilliant at masterminding the art of storytelling …”
– Hillary Leftwich, author of Aura, A Memoir and Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock
“Glory Guitars is a multi-sensory, tilt-a-whirl fun house adventure of guiltless teenage rebellion that formerly puritanical readers can live vicariously through, retroactively experiencing every school-ditch drunken escapade …”
– Amanda E.K., author of The Risk It Takes to Bloom
ABOUT GOGO GERMAINE
A neurodiverse girl in a ’90s suburban world, Gogo Germaine was born with a lollipop-swirl brain, goth-kitty heart, and lightning-bolt soul. She won the Spelling Bee and the D.A.R.E. essay contest in the 6th grade. She was voted “Most Unique” in the 7th grade. It was all downhill from there.
The rest was the stuff of hysterical after-school specials: stealing cigs, shotgunning PBRs, snorting cocaine, sneaking punk boys into her pink bedroom, and listening to tinny car stereo tunes while glaring into the sun like a muscle-shirt dad. She snuck away every night for a summer; fled to California, but only made it just past her Fort Collins; paid $12 for a tattoo she got on top of a parking garage; banged a dude whose name was bathroom graffiti in a coffee shop; was courted by an aging rockstar; and spent her adolescence running through every door. And then, one day, she finally escaped.
Gogo became a band publicist, music journalist, and writer devoted to exploring rebellion and the grey areas of life. She helped start what was rumored to be a sex cult in a haunted bordello in a ghost town, gave birth to two love children, and wrote such subversive things that she was estranged from half of her family and friends in a single year.
Gogo currently spends her days working in a phantasmagorical wonderland. She wrote Glory Guitars to capture the feeling of the air as she ran across a field ditching school, totally free of responsibility. It became a hopeful platform for her to reclaim her agency and make sense of all the heartbreak she was running from: the heartbreak of being a differently-wired girl in a predatory world. She is no longer a danger-seeking asshole. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.
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