Here, Kate bravely and wittily shares personal and unorthodox methods of survival for navigating an often cruel world. A one-of-a-kind guide to staying alive outside the box, Hello, Cruel World is a much-needed unconventional approach to teenage suicide prevention for marginalized youth who want to stay on the edge, but alive.

Hello, Cruel World features a catalog of 101 Alternatives to Suicide that range from the playful (Moisturize), to the irreverent (Disbelieve the Binary), to the highly controversial (Get Laid. Please). Designed to encourage readers to give themselves permission to unleash their hearts' harmless desires, the book has only one directive: "Don't be mean." It is this guiding principle that brings its reader on a self-validating journey, which forges wholly new paths toward a resounding decision to choose life.

Tenderly intimate and unapologetically edgy, Kate is the radical role model, the affectionate best friend, and the guiding mentor all in one kind and spirited package.

A celebrated pioneer for the LGBTQI community, transsexual author and performance artist, Kate Bornstein is the author of the wildly successful books My Gender Workbook and Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us.

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span> “With more esteemed names than can be listed…this book will gather no dust on your bookshelf.”—Curve Magazine

In a collection of original stories, essays, artwork, and photography, Nan Goldin, Eileen Myles, bell hooks, and other cutting-edge artists explore their use of art to survive madness, abuse, incest, depression, and the impulse toward self-destruction manifest in eating disorders, cutting, addiction, and contemplation of suicide. The book confronts the brutality many women and girls encounter in the world around them, and bravely takes as its subject the often misunderstood violence they at times inflict upon themselves.

The diverse array of contributors here—novelists, poets, cartoonists, dancers, photographers, playwrights, burlesque performers—traverse the pains and passions that can both motivate and destroy women artists, and they mark a path for survival. Together they show that creative women are not destined to the fate of lost visionaries such as Woolf, Sexton, Arbus, and Plath. Live Through This is a fearless exploration of women’s silent rage, the power that can come from internal struggle, and the possibility of transforming this burning force into fierce and enlightened work.

With contributions by Nan Goldin, bell hooks, Patricia Smith, Cristy Road, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, Carolyn Gage, Eileen Myles, Fly, Diane DiMassa, Bonfire Madigan, Inga Muscio, Kate Bornstein, Toni Blackman, Nicole Blackman, Silas Howard, Daphne Gottleib, and Stephanie Howell.

Sabrina Chapadjiev is a playwright, spoken word artist, and singer-songwriter originally from the suburbs of Chicago. She is founder of the all-woman songwriter series Chicks that Kick, editor of the zine Cliterature: 18 Interviews with Women Writers, and her plays, including Perhaps Merely Quiet, have been produced in the United States and Europe.