Introducing Hollis Gillespie | Moodswing | Creative Loafing Charlotte
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Introducing Hollis Gillespie 

"When I was seven I had a crush on Satan.". . . and that's neither the first nor the last time humor columnist and NPR commentator Hollis Gillespie's life has taken a swerve toward the bizarre. Her outrageously funny — and equally heartbreaking — autobiographical tales (such as the collection featured in her debut book, Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch) chronicle her journey through self-reckoning and the worst neighborhoods of Atlanta in search of a home she can call her own.The daughter of a missile scientist and an alcoholic traveling trailer salesman, Gillespie was nine before she realized not everybody's mother made bombs, and thirty before she realized it was possible to live in one place longer than a six-month lease allows.

Supporting her are the social outcasts she calls her best friends: Daniel, a talented and eccentric artist; Grant, who makes his living peddling folk art by a denounced nun who paints plywood signs with twisted evangelical sayings; and Lary, who often, out of compassion, offers to shoot her like a lame horse.

Hollis' friends help her battle the mess of obstacles that stand in her way — including her warped childhood, in which her parents moved her and her siblings around the country like carnival barkers, chasing missile-building contracts and other whimsies, such as her father's dream to patent and sell, door to door, the world's most wondrous keychain. A past like this will make you doubt you'll ever have a future, much less roots. Miraculously, though, Gillespie manages to plant exactly that: roots, as wrested and dubious as they are.

As Gillespie says, "Life is too damn short to remain trapped in your own Alcatraz." Follow her on her wickedly funny journeys as she manages to escape again and again.

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