Rebecca Brenner
Rebecca Brenner (she/her) is a writer, journalist, and mindfulness meditation teacher. Her work has appeared in TIME, the Los Angeles Times, Tin House, and elsewhere. She serves as president and co-founder of Mindful. Summit County, a nonprofit devoted to mindfulness as a tool for community care, and is active in local LGBTQ+ advocacy and community-building efforts. Paper House is her debut memoir-in-verse—a personal reckoning with the intergenerational impact of addiction, loss, and the enduring bonds that continue.
poetry
Paper House
A Memoir-in-Verse
trade paperback / 6 x 9 / 130pp / 978-1-965320-532
Also Available in pbk and ebook on Amazon – US & Global > B&N > Bookshop.org > Apple > Walmart > Target > Waterstones > Betterworld Books > In Your Local Bookstore
Paper House by Rebecca Brenner is a memoir in verse that tenderly examines grief, memory, and the intergenerational impact of addiction. Years after losing her mother to opioid addiction, Brenner opens a sealed box of her mother’s poetry, journals, and short stories. This act of discovery unearths a lifetime of love, loss, and trauma, sparking a deeply personal reckoning.
Writing poems in response to her mother’s work, Brenner reconstructs her mother’s presence through poetry, navigating the tension between absence and remembrance. The act of writing becomes a process where raw emotion meets the deliberate structure of language. Through this, Brenner pieces together fragments of her mother’s life—not to erase the scars but to find meaning in their permanence.
Paper House is a joint memoir told in alternating voices and spanning three distinct timelines. Brenner weaves her mother’s experiences with her own journey to confront generational trauma and rebuild her family’s foundation. Her raw, evocative verse resonates with universal themes of love, loss, and survival, examining how addiction imprints itself on family and identity while offering pathways to healing.
At its core, Paper House is both an elegy and an exploration—a meditation on motherhood, memory, and the courage it takes to confront the past. Brenner’s writing invites readers to hold the contradictions of love and pain, find meaning in unresolved spaces, and discover hope in the transformative power of storytelling.
“With an enviable command of form and a singular voice, Brenner creates an unforgettable experience for her reader. More specifically, she uses performative language and the style of the writing to heighten the emotional impact of an already riveting story—a beautifully rendered arc of adversity, grief, and redemption. Brava!”
—Kristina Marie Darling, author of Daylight Has Already Come
“In the wake of death and devastation, Brenner’s words lend us courage to lean in. As the poet proclaims, there is no private salvation. Still, if we stay present, we might stumble into some grace.”
—Nan Seymour, Founder of River Writing
“Paper House is a powerful and necessary read for anyone who has been touched by addiction and is looking for a way to navigate tenuous conditions with courage and grace.”
—Heidi Barr, Wellness Specialist; Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and author of Collisions of Earth and Sky
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