Bleeder

A Memoir

Shelby Smoak

Winner of a PEN American Center award for writers living with HIV

2013 IPPY/Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal For Autobiography/Memoir

2014 ForeWord Reviews IndieFab Book The Year Award, Gold Medal, Autobiography & Memoir

Narrated by Jack de Golia

Available from Audible

Book published by Michigan State University Press

I am Caucasian, five foot eleven, have sandy brown hair, blue eyes, and am a tender slip of bone. And I am at the hospital.

A coming-of-age memoir for modern times, Bleeder is the incredibly compelling tale of author Shelby Smoak. A hemophiliac, Smoak discovered he had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion at the start of his college career. This devastating and destabilizing news led Smoak to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness was perpetually just around the corner. Set in the 1990s along the North Carolina coast, Bleeder traces Smoak’s quest for love in a world that feels increasingly dangerous, and despite a future that feels increasingly uncertain. From the bedroom to the operating room, and from one hospital to the next, Smoak seeks out hope and better health. Smoak, whose work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, constructs this unforgettable story of life and love against insurmountable difficulties in breathtaking, tightly drawn prose.