“When I tell this story as a joke, I am its punchline. Leaning in close, I might start with this bit: The night before my first husband got outed to me, I was in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood dressed up as Liza Minnelli for Halloween.” — Preface, Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage

“In breathtaking prose, Kelly Foster Lundquist renders visible the ‘beard,’ an experience so often presented as little more than a footnote in someone else’s story. A love story, a treatise on seeing and overlooking, and an exploration of what it means to know oneself and be known by another, Beard is a tremendous achievement, and also just tremendous writing. I will be recommending it to everyone I know.” –Chris Stedman, author of IRL and Faitheist, and creator and host of the podcast Unread

Kelly Foster Lundquist turns the well-worn trope of the “beard” inside out, delivering a memoir as sharp as it is tender. With wit, precision, and unflinching honesty, she shows how easy it is to be both the punchline and the truth-teller. Moving between the personal and the cultural, Beard excavates the messy realities of love, shame, queerness, and belonging. Ultimately, it’s a memoir about misrecognition of others and of oneself. About the longing to be chosen, the betrayal of self-erasure, and the bittersweet process of rewriting the stories we once believed would save us.—Ryan Berg, author of No House to Call My Home: Love, Family and Other Transgressions

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