RACHEL WEAVER
Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now, was chosen by the American Booksellers Association as a Top Ten Debut for Spring 2014, by IndieBound as an Indie Next List Pick, and won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors and songbirds. She is on faculty at Wilkes University’s low-residency MFA program, and at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Rachel’s migraine memoir, Dizzy, is forthcoming in February 2026 with West Virginia University Press as a part of the Connective Tissues Series. Her novel, The Last Run, is forthcoming in June 2026 with Lake Union. For more information visit https://www.rachelweaver.net/
DIZZY: A MEMOIR
WVU PRESS, 2026
“An arresting new memoir….” – Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
In her early thirties, Rachel Weaver woke up dizzy and unable to function. She spent the next ten years seeing more than thirty medical practitioners before receiving a diagnosis, and then another eight years before finding relief from her condition. Dizzy is amedical mystery and a cautionary tale about our broken healthcare system. It is a story about learning to live with life’s uncertainty, persevering in the pursuit of answers, and striving to find joy in an imperfect yet beautiful world.
“Dizzy is a memoir of the highest quality. It brings beauty and urgency to the overall necessary conversation about the U.S. medical system, while also functioning as a beautifully written literary memoir. This high-stakes story is spiked with moments of uncommon wisdom,poignancy, and deep emotion. I was moved to tears many times.”-Erika Krouse, author of Save Me, Stranger: Stories
“Stark, unsettling, and propulsive…. Dizzy is an essential book for women, for those living with invisible pain, and for anyone who has had to dismantle countless barriers just to be believed.” — Sally Jane Brown, Arrhythmia Magazine
Dizzy evokes what life is in wreckage of chronic illness, with suffering compounded by abandonment by specialist medicine that has no means to care for those it cannot treat. Ill people will find a lifeline of companionship in Dizzy; healthcare professionals will face a challenge. Rachel Weaver never softens her story, and that gives it truth as a testimonial to the will to live fully in whatever conditions life throws at you. — Arthur W. Frank, author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics
“Dizzy is a tale of tenacity, bravery, and daring to hope when all seems lost. I found strength and courage in its pages and I think you will, too.” — Natalie Mead, writer of Oops, My Brain,
“Dizzy is a testament to the power of hope. Weaver’s courage and strength are so inspiring they encourage the same in the reader. If all of that isn’t enough, the beauty and agility of the prose may make you regret reaching the last page.” — Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars with Boys
THE LAST RUN
Lake Union, 2026
On the bracing edges of Alaska, a single mother is driven to secure her legacy in a powerful novel of family, forgiveness, and finding one’s place in the world by the author of Point of Direction.
It’s been years since Ellie fished the Alaskan coastline―not since her mother died. But when she finds her father beat up behind the local bar, she learns he’s done the unforgivable: gambled away the family’s commercial fishing boat―her five-year-old son’s inheritance and the life she longs to reclaim. For nefarious reasons of his own, the bookie gives them one season to earn the money to buy it back.
Ellie agrees to fish with her father, Pete, bringing her son, Drew, along as they chase the slim hope of paying off the debt. She’s no stranger to backbreaking work and little sleep; what she’s never been good at is accepting help―or trusting anyone, especially a secretive homesteader with demons of his own. Ellie’s growing attraction and the dangerous waters are the least of her worries. She’s hiding secrets from everyone and, as the date with the bookie draws closer, she is at risk of losing it all.