Gotham Girl Interrupted My Misadventures in Motherhood, Love, and Epilepsy

Nora Ephron and Allie Brosh fans take note: Alisa Jones' memoir Gotham Girl Interrupted is a smart stand-up comedy about the power of falling down.

"Get to your safe spaces, people. Here comes the shimmer..."

From irreverent NYC blogger Alisa Kennedy Jones comes an account of her "misadventures in motherhood, love, and epilepsy" that James Patterson calls "smart, harrowing, heart-warming, and very funny."

What do Da Vinci, Agatha Christie, and blogger Alisa Kennedy Jones have in common? If you said "timeless artistic genius", stop sucking up--the answer is ecstatic epilepsy. In this hilarious and moving dispatch from the frontlines of neurodiversity, Jones chronicles life with these terrifying-yet-beautiful grand mal seizures. Characteristic of Jones's condition are attacks which leave her with what Zen Buddhists sometimes refer to as a "beginner's mind": a vast, open expanse of headspace, coupled with a creative euphoria.

With bracing candor and humility, Jones describes living with chronic illness, single motherhood, and her day-to-day life as a hapless writer in NYC. Above all, Jones reminds us to fight the battle for becoming who we are supposed to be--no matter how much flopping around on the ground and wetting ourselves we have to do to get there.

Alisa Kennedy Jones is a writer for TV and theater, with credits including A Girl and a Gun, Ulutwatu and Gifted. She also has a background working in digital advertising, branding and strategy for clients such as GE, Coca-Cola, Tommy Hilfiger, Disney, Electronic Arts and Colgate-Palmolive. She writes the blog Gotham Girl (currently almost 30,000 followers on Twitter) and is an NPR commentator who is active in the autism, human rights, and neurodiversity communities. She lives in New York City.