"What the Body Requires is to the mind what chocolate is to the tongue — rich and decadent." —Carolyn Szczepanski, The Pitch
 "Some moments involve hi stakes situations and a bit of mystery, though I’d never call What the Body Requires a genre novel. This book is highly sexual, but never cliched. Di Blasi just kills it." —The Next Best Book Blog
 "Highly ambitious and of the deepest seriousness... with an evocative prose and an exotic, vividly imagined landscape. The consistency with which the writing invests everyday actions and objects with an almost erotic fervor is truly extraordinary." 
–R.M. Berry, author of Leonardo's Horse, Dictionary of Modern Anguish, and Frank 
 DESCRIPTION: Madeline Rivera goes to Europe to kill her husband, a musician, but falls in love with his doppleganger, an Italian policeman. Structured as a symphony, What the Body Requires explores a woman’s sexuality and passion for art as she slides into the madness of revenge. Structured around an elaborate symphony, What the Body Requires is ripe with music references, musicians and the intentionally overt drama of opera.

What the Body Requires: a symphonic novel

Literature & Fiction

Di Blasi, Debra

Literary

Jaded Ibis Press

AN ANTHOLOGY OF ART AND WRITING FULL-COLOR ILLUSTRATED EDITION "It’s pleasant being naked, as swimmer or writer or reader.... Naked’s a way of being free, unencumbered by garment or censor. There exists no other way of knowing certain things, or oneself, without stripping away." —from the Preface by Debra Di Blasi, editor One artist and 54 writers accepted the challenge of creatively defining "dirty" in the 21st Century. Mugi Takei’s delicate, profane watercolors position the human body within, on and against nature. While some writers surrendered to play through sexually explicit love poetry, bawdy fiction, threesomes, twosomes, onesomes, and all the delightful fantasies and realities in-between, others suggested genocide to be the real dirt of humanity, or offer sexy, new versions of biblical stories. As an anthology, Dirty : Dirty exhibits the beauty, humor, raunch and invention possible when talented artists and writers tackle a very old subject. THE ARTIST: Mugi Takei THE WRITERS: Greg Bachar, Elizabeth Burns, Jennifer Calkins, Jane L. Carman, Kylee Cook, Beth Couture, Dirk Cowan, Justin Dobbs, Trevor Dodge, Rion Woolf, C. M. Connelly, April Gigliotti, Christopher Grimes, Steve Halle, Jeff Hansen, Michael Harold, Garrett Hayes, Jacqueline Heffron, Lily Hoang, Nabila Najwa, Eric Jeitner, Liesl Jobson, Steve Katz, Kimberly Koga, Stacey Levine, Marilyn Jaye Lewis, Robert Lopez, Cris Mazza, Joe Milazzo, Kathleen Miller, Scott Million, Theresa A. O'Donnell, Jordan Okumura, Melanie Page, Mitch Parker, Aimee Parkinson, Jack Rees, AE Reiff, Doug Rice, Thaddeus Rutkowski, Davis Schneiderman, Mikal Shapiro, Gary Shipley, Ascot Smith, Rob Stephenson, Helen Tran, Holms Troelstrup, J. A. Tyler, c.vance, Laura Vena, Hal Wert, Lane Williams, Alyssa Wisener, Lidia Yuknavitch

Dirty : Dirty: An illustrated anthology of 'dirty' writing

Takei, Mugi

Chinese Brush Painting: Bees and Wasps

Arts & Photography

Themes

Independently published

COLOR EDITIONAward-winning author Debra Di Blasi gathers her most radical, challenging, and evocative writing into one delicious book. Not for the faint of heart, these stories stretch from the Phil Spector murder trial to murders in an African township, from a hedge fund manager's sexually explicit death throes to a suicidal teen's Facebook page, from the fragility of a marriage to the hidden violence of suburbia, and beyond. A sumptuous, compelling and intelligent collision of text and image. Praise for Debra Di Blasi’s Writing New York Times Book Review: "In clear, resonant prose, laced with bittersweet humor, Di Blasi imparts her understanding of love's multiple ironies." Publishers Weekly: "Both Di Blasi's style and her objective distance and comprehension of her chosen subject mark her as a very psychologically driven, very talented writer." Kansas City Star: "Debra Di Blasi writes in a gray zone where literature, art and conceptual performance meet. Her prose reads like poetry or comes with scrapbook visuals. Her social comment channels Duchamp and his surreal cousins."

Skin of the Sun: New Writing

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Los Angeles 1951-1953. A vicious rape, revenge gone awry, and American consumerism collide the first novel of a projected 4-book mytho-lyric. Lucy is born gifted and burdened with an "unsightly" right eye that sees far beyond the visible spectrum, lending her an uncanny view of events, things and people, including the dead. Her father is famous as an obscenely well-endowed men's underwear model; her mother is famous as a sexy teenager modeling luxury automobiles-until wicked L.A. car dealer Mr. Wolf cons her into posing for increasingly explicit pinups. In language both wildly lyrical and transgressive, Lucy recounts the story of her "not smart" parents and Big Bad Wolf who becomes the catalyst for her conception and eventual calamity.

Birth of Eros

Humor & Satire

Kernpunkt Press

Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. Raised in a family of seven, in a small ramshackle farmhouse without plumbing, award-winning author Debra Di Blasi maps a candid and eloquent memoir of a Midwest childhood both land rich and dirt poor, both heaven and hell. Surrounded by creatures big and small, rolling fields and pastures, weedy lawn, deep woods and shimmering waters, she wrestles with the complexity of a crowded family shaped by place and doomed to tear itself apart. SELLING THE FARM explores the difficult intersection of grief and love, and the many contradictions in nature, life and death, and memory itself. Her lyrical recollections move from season to season with language visually and aurally shaped to reconsider the ways that we bear witness to any place and time--and to ourselves amid all. As personal and global extinctions loom in the foreground, and family farms become increasingly scarce, these elegiac ruminations remind us how much has been--and will be--lost to us all.

Selling the Farm

History & Criticism

C&R Press

Chinese Brush Painting: Mammals and Fowl

Painting

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