Dessa

"Dessa writes beautifully about a wide range of topics, including science, music, and the pain that comes with being in love; it's a surprising and generous memoir by a singular voice."--NPR, Best Books of 2018Dessa defies category--she is an intellectual with an international rap career and an inhaler in her backpack; a creative writer fascinated by philosophy and behavioral science; and a funny, charismatic performer dogged by blue moods and heartache. She's ferocious on stage and endearingly neurotic in the tour van. Her stunning literary debut memoir stitches together poignant insights on love, science, and language--a demonstration of just how far the mind can travel while the body is on a six-hour ride to the next gig.In "The Fool That Bets Against Me," Dessa writes to Geico to request a commercial insurance policy for the broken heart that's helped her write so many sad songs. "A Ringing in the Ears" tells the story of her father building a wooden airplane in their backyard garage. In "'Congratulations, '" she describes the challenge of recording a song for The Hamilton Mixtape in a Minneapolis basement, straining for a high note and hoping for a break. "Call Off Your Ghost" chronicles the fascinating project she undertook with a team of neuroscientists to try to clinically excise romantic feelings for an old flame. Her writing is infused with scientific research, dry wit, a philosophical perspective, and an abiding tenderness for the people she tours with and the people she leaves behind to be on the road.My Own Devices is an uncompromising and candid account of a life in motion, in music, and in love. Dessa is as compelling on the page as she is onstage, making My Own Devices the debut of a unique and deft literary voice.

File Life,Death,Vertigo.Sparrows,Saints,and Morphine.

Acclaimed as a songwriter, performer, and recording artist, the whirlwind force known as Dessa wears one moniker with particular pride: writer. A Pound of Steam presents seven poems exploring identity and alienation, a philosophical bent that can be found in her song lyrics, but here goes further to unearth truths about the human condition.

Tits on the Moon features a dozen “stage poems,” many of which Dessa performs at her legendary live shows; they’re funny, weird, and occasionally bittersweet. The collection opens with a short essay on craft (and the importance of having a spare poem around for when the power goes out). Proudly published by Rain Taxi in association with Doomtree, Tits on the Moon features a stunning cover pressed with gold foil and structurally embossed.

A small, short, and witty conversation between two people.

This is a book of bespoke drink recipes named after and inspired by the songs on Bury the Lede, the full-length album by Dessa. Some of the recipes can be mixed and served swiftly; others are built in stages for maximum dramatic effect. This slender volume contains not only clever recipes ranging from simple batched cocktails to color- changing showstoppers, designed by beverage maverick Marco Zappia (who makes “the most fun cocktails in America” —Esquire). It’s also a collection of little essays on the strange and interesting ways that artists collaborate, and it offers a bit of insight into the science that sits beneath the surface of every mixed drink. You will find the intrigue of secret recipes guarded by friars; the methods that bartenders use to mix drinks by ear as the temperature affects the pitch of clattering ice; and the alchemic combinations of ideas that emerge from people sharing something strong late at night.

Hidden Forms is a photographic meditation on the quiet, fragile beauty of the Black Sea. The idea was born during a solitary winter walk along the coast — a time of calm, when the air was still and the sea mirrored the pale sky. I wandered the beach, playing with what I traces on the sand, footsteps, bird prints, bits of glass softened by the waves, seaweed, shells, and pebbles briefly caught in motion.Each triptych weaves these small encounters into fine art compositions — a dialogue between stillness and movement, nature and human presence, fragment and wholeness. Through shifting angles of light and shadow, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, revealing translucent forms and fragile beauty shaped by the sea itself.Part visual poem and part meditation on perception, Hidden Forms invites you to pause and look closer — to find poetry in what is often overlooked, and to sense the quiet rhythm that flows where water, sand, and time meet.

Sea Breeze is a photographic meditation on silence and presence along the Black Sea coast. Through black and white triptychs, it transforms simple moments — shifting light, passing birds, traces on the sand — into quiet compositions where stillness becomes visible.Each image carries the rhythm of the sea inhaling and exhaling, the world pausing between movement and rest. The human figure appears rarely, humbly — part of the landscape, airy and soft, almost dissolving into light.This body of work is less about observation than about listening. It reflects the subtle poetry of the everyday — a conversation between sea and sky, distance and intimacy, solitude and calm.In Sea Breeze , photography becomes a form of awareness — a way to feel the vast, unspoken quiet that lives where water meets light.

Lights and Shadows is a photographic meditation on contrast, emotion, and the quiet pulse of Florence. Captured during the cool seasons, the series reveals a city beyond its brilliance — a place where light softens, shadows deepen, and beauty hides in stillness.Each triptych captures a fleeting harmony between architecture and atmosphere, between the play of light and the human presence moving through it. Faces, colors, reflections, and streets merge into visual compositions that balance warmth and melancholy, motion and pause.Through these fine art photographs, Florence becomes both stage and spirit — its walls breathing with memory, its light whispering through narrow alleys, its shadows alive with invisible life.Part visual poem and part meditation on perception, Lights and Shadows invites the viewer to slow down, to listen to the rhythm of the city’s breath — where the sun meets the stone and the sky, and where feeling takes the shape of light.