Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Cynthia Marie Hoffman is author of Exploding Head (Feb 2024), Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer. Essays in TIME, The Sun, and Lit Hub. Poems in The Believer, Image, and Electric Lit.

Madison, WI, United States

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Books

Book cover of Exploding Head by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Exploding HeadA memoir in prose poems about the poet's lifelong journey with obsessive-compulsive disorder. 2024

Book cover of Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Call Me When You Want to Talk about the TombstonesProse poetry, collage, genealogy, family history.Persea Books, 2018

Book cover of Paper Doll Fetus by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Paper Doll FetusA Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection. History and myth of birth and medicine.Persea Books, 2014

Book cover of Sightseer by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

SightseerWinner of the 2010 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. Epistolary travel poems.Persea Books, 2011

Selected work (6 publications)

The Commuter (Electric Literature), 2023

Seven Darknesses, Diagnosis, and TherapyThree prose poems about OCD from Cynthia Marie Hoffman's 2024 book Exploding Head.

The Beast in Your HeadAn account of how Metallica's song "Enter Sandman" impacted the author as a teenager with OCD, experiencing a terrifying car accident, and later, as an adult, finding joy through an unexpected cover of the song.

creative nonfiction

Bennington Review, 2023

Quality of Life"Right at this moment, an airplane is crashing through the roof."

The Los Angeles Review, 2021

Exploding Head SyndromeIn your dreams, you are always running from the shadow that chases you through the forest. At night, an owl screams a womanly, murderous scream.

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