Navigating the Timelines of Brutalities

Brooke Knisley and Margo Steines talk tense, text and weaving essays into memoir.

Margo Steines

In her 2023 memoir Brutalities: A Love Story, Margo Steines constructs meditations on violence and intimacy using two separate timelines written in two distinct styles. One of the timelines, told through essays, follows her experiences as an adolescent dominatrix in New York City and intense relationship with a much older man. The other timeline comprises diary-esque dispatches about her present-...