No Credit River by Zoe Whittall

“It is a confusing thing to be born between generations where the one above thinks nothing is trauma and the one below thinks everything is trauma.”

From acclaimed novelist and television writer Zoe Whittall comes a memoir in prose poetry that reconfirms her celebrated honesty, emotional acuity, and wit. Riving and probing a period of six years marked by abandoned love, the pain of a lost pregnancy, and pandemic isolation, No Credit River is a reckoning with the creative instinct itself.

Open and exacting, this is a unique examination of anxiety in complex times, and a contribution to contemporary autofiction as formally inventive as it is full of heart.

Praise for No Credit River

“No Credit River is a masterful expression of queer heartache. Zoe Whittall writes with self-possessed and unmitigated emotion. She writes both with urgency and the sagacity that comes with a dark-night-of-the-soul level of reflection. The lyrical prose firmly holds the weight of the book’s themes. I love the gutsy musicality of the writing. I am particularly moved by Whittall’s use of motif and refrain to remind us of the cyclical nature of love and grief and healing.” —Amber Dawn, author of My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems

“In No Credit River, Zoe Whittall pulls us into the eddies of attachment and alienation, eros and elegy, and an ever-present slipstream of love we can never fully inhabit or abandon. The softly abraded memories are mapped by an ars poetica that signals both an experimentation with form and a grief-tempered, arresting honesty. These poems are an exploration of connection and loss, and the bonds that fray and fortify the self. No Credit River is a testament to our queer and artistic communities—profoundly thoughtful, coursing with intelligence.” —Ali Blythe, author of Stedfast

“Whittall’s return to poetry has been well worth the wait. Call this a collection of prose poems, call it autofiction, call it memoir riddled with metaphor, call it names, call it whatever you want really, as long as you call it. These poems embrace contradiction like lovers who have broken up but still won’t let go; they fill the wasteland between the phrases ‘nothing is traumatic’ and ‘everything is traumatic.’ No Credit River is one of the most electrifying collections I have read in years.” —Hannah Green, author of Xanax Cowboy