"A person of unlimited strength and potential..."

"Alliotts is a writer with unusual focus, fascination with structure, and verbal skill... [He] writes like a man who has fallen out of the sky and is astonished even years later to find himself alive on the ground... Alliotts loves syllogisms and tight structure―ideas, themes, impressions that click perfectly into place..."

—Thomas Powers, Dartmouth professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA, when evaluating Alliotts's work during Powers's "Telling True Stories" class. 

"I'm giving [Alliotts] a High Pass in recognition of his extraordinary final assignment, as good and honest a piece of writing as I've read at Dartmouth or in my years teaching graduate students at NYU. I look forward to reading more from Alliotts one day soon―not as a student but as a colleague, a fellow writer."

—Jeff Sharlet, Dartmouth professor, best-selling author, and winner of the National Magazine Award in the Dartmouth citation he wrote evaluating Alliotts's work following Sharlet's "40 Towns" class.


"A surprisingly powerful story. Jamie took what I actually think is a fairly predictable topic―or at least the romanticized depression of drinking, drug, and bar culture―and made it much more moving and unique than most. (Obviously because he has a lot more at stake than most.) A natural writer... I bet the memoir will be good."

—Kathryn Joyce, author of The Child Catchers and Quiverfull; contributor, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate.


"Jamie Alliotts may not think he can tell a story... but boy is he wrong. In this phenomenal debut, Alliotts displays the skills of a true virtuoso, one who takes the power of words seriously but has perfect comic timing, someone who's sympathetic to his subjects but unafraid to show them at their ugliest. And most of all, Alliotts is a storyteller of radical honesty, who comes clean about his own struggles and works tirelessly to put himself back on the path. His writing indicates a person of unlimited strength and potential whose success should be encouraged in any way possible."

—Brook Wilensky-Lanford, author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden and editor of Killing the Buddha.


"There’s a real rhythm to the piece, a lot of life packed in, and powerful acts of compression―the two brief grafs about the psych ward, for instance, are more evocative than thousands of words would be from a lesser talent. It takes you on a journey and avoids the pitfalls of working with material like this―for instance, it doesn't seem maudlin or macho or preening, just direct, curious, empathetic..."

—Jason Fagone, author of Ingenious and Horsemen of the Esophagus.


"Compassion, graceful prose, masterful restraint..."

—Blair Braverman, author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube.


"I like his lede a lot... Send him my way!"

—Sean Woods, Deputy Managing Editor at Rolling Stone.