General 1 — MARGO STEINES CREATIVE

My debut book,

BRUTALITIES: a love story,

is now out.

A searing, vivid memoir that investigates the dynamics of violence, power, desire, and a body pushed to the brink.

Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a mixed martial arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new vantage point from which to see how power and masculinity coalesce—and how her body paid the price. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of tenderness and care.

Find me on book tour:

Advance praise:

“Brutalities is a perfect book. Reading it felt like consuming something designed precisely for me and of course, I won't be alone in this―that is the genius of great works of art: they reach our deepest interiors by naming the unspoken ordinary, the things we fear seeing or being seen as. There is nothing ordinary about this book, however. It is a brainy, elegant, erotic, brutal, funny, hypnotic achievement by an author obsessed with the far reaches of what it means to live in a body, and how some kinds of love look like violence while others can be medicine. It has made a devotee of me; I'll read anything Margo Steines ever writes."
— Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and Body Work

"Brutalities is electric with insight, riveted by its commitments―to love and bewilderment, to bearing witness―and utterly propulsive in its explorations of compulsion, tenderness, caregiving, and desire. Margo Steines sees the world fiercely and freshly, with a rapt and nuanced gaze utterly her own. Imagine journeying to the center of the earth, except the earth is a human body―full of wanting and haunting―and the journey is just harrowing and glorious enough to do justice to the work and wonder of being alive."
― Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn

"This book circles around the simple fact that each of us is capable of change. It does not matter where we’ve been or what we’ve done or what’s been done to us, change is always possible. Margo Steines, through what some might call grace, has emerged from a (perhaps) chosen darkness, to focus all her wild energies into these pages. To get here she had to descend into realms you might find disturbing, but trust that if you descend with her (the trip is exhilarating) you too will emerge, also changed. This book is an amazing feat, Steines has crafted something truly lovely, and it’s her writing that makes it sing."
― Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire

"Margo Steines is a radical writer and also a slyly hilarious one. She goes places most of us dare not go and comes back with surprising truths that tell us as much about us as they do about her. This is the trick of great self-writing, to understand just how capacious the self can be and how porous with the wildnesses of the world. Steines's writing is alive, weird, dark, and electric."
― Ander Monson, author of Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession

BRUTALITIES in the media

New York Times Book Review

“Pain Was Her Drug”
"Steines manages to keep her reader close, writing with a rare crystalline precision as she explores her fixation with violence and with certain forms of traditional masculinity.”
The Atlantic

“Seven Books That Earn Your Tears”
“Steines writes with unrelenting clarity about visceral bodily experiences—the self-annihilating agony of being flogged; the snap of a fractured heel bone; the shock of a red-hot welding rod sizzling against skin. But she writes with equal power about deeply tender things, such as feeling her body swell and change in pregnancy, and the love she has for her partner.”
Observer

“Margo Steines Thinks Violence Makes Us Human, But That Doesn’t Have to Be a Bad Thing”
“Despite Steines’ self-described aversion to appearing (or feeling) soft, Brutalities is driven by love and gratefulness just as much as the brutalities themselves—it’s filled to the brim with her hard-won affection for herself, for others, for life and living it. It’s a memoir, and it’s also a universal treatise on the things we do for pain and why we do them. It is deeply, deeply human, often uncomfortably so.”
Kirkus Reviews

“A passionate and lyrical memoir and meditation on what might drive someone to seek violence.”
"Steines tackles complex, nuanced truths about power and violence through clear writing and an unflinching gaze... [A] propulsive debut... The author’s skillful prose expresses pain clearly...but this discomfort is tempered by her clearheaded insights and retroactive self-empathy."
Shondaland

“The Best Books for October 2023”
"From being a dominatrix to a welder, Steines meticulously describes the emotional toll of these jobs, deftly leading readers through several different stages of her life and how they all have informed her relationship with her body.”
Chicago Review of Books

“Intersections Between Pain and Pleasure in ‘Brutalities’”
"Unforgettable... Brutalities is alive with candor and care in its attention toward the body and the pressures the world places upon it."
BUST

“Brutalities: A Love Story, The Debut Memoir By Margo Steines Is One Hell Of A Read”
"There are many profound takeaways from this memoir... It's one hell of a read, and well worth every page."
Write or Die

“On a Different Kind of Love Story, Finding Frames for Essays, and Her Debut Essay Collection ‘Brutalities’”
“It’s a love story, but not the kind we’re used to. Steines is giving her whole self, and finding love, in a life where there was a lot of pain, a lot of hustles, and a lot of violence. She is radiating peace and calm, or at least a continuing quest for them, and diving into some of the most difficult topics.”
Brooklyn Rail

“Margo Steines with Rachel León”
“The result is a mesmerizing and masterful exploration of violence, power, pain, and ultimately, care. As the title suggests, while the book centers brutal incidents, it does so with tenderness and grace.”
Shondaland

"Margo Steines’ ‘Brutalities: A Love Story’ Is a Unique Love Story All Its Own"
“Steines also explores addiction and addictive behavior, and beautifully captures an arc of a person learning to come home to herself. Interspersed with scenes of her being pregnant during the pandemic lockdown while living with her new, loving partner in the desert, the book is a gorgeous mosaic of pain, pleasure, and the wild experience of being in your body.”
Literary Mama

“I Like When It’s Messy”
“Steines sculpts a philosophical exploration of pain, toughness, and violence that exists alongside a touching story of falling in love and making a family.”
The Millions

“The Violent Truths of ‘Brutalities’”
“Steines argues that not all cognitive dissonance is hypocrisy, and demanding purity tests—either/or—negates the very real experience of ambivalence that rings most true for her: both/and.”