Our Bodies Electric with Zackary Vernon

Our Bodies Electric was Kelly’s #1 book of 2024 and we can’t wait to have Zackary visit the store for a conversation with her about it.

About the Book:
Tormented by his religious family and the broader conservative community of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, fourteen-year-old Josh struggles with the pressure to conform to their puritanical standards. As he embarks upon his high school years, Josh meets a supportive cast of eccentric small-town characters, falls in love with his classmate, becomes obsessed with David Bowie, and fumbles in his attempts to make his own thongs. But it’s when his elderly neighbor gives him a copy of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” that he begins to understand his own sexuality. Our Bodies Electric is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the exuberance of youth, the individual quest for sexual identity, and the joy of finding connections in the most unexpected of places.

About the Author:
Originally from Pawleys Island, Zackary Vernon lives in Boone, NC, where he’s on the faculty at Appalachian State University. He is a co-editor of Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash, and editor of Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies. His creative nonfiction has been published in magazines and journals, such as The Bitter Southerner, North Carolina Literary Review, and Carolina Quarterly.