The Undying – A Meditation on Modern Illness

Penguin Books – 2019

I designed the cover for the American poet Anne Boyer deeply affecting cancer memoir.

Diagnosed with highly aggressive breast cancer at 41, Anne Boyer recounts how the catastrophic condition was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. Weaving references about ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers, the ecological costs of chemotherapy and the bland hypocrisies of ‘pink ribbon culture’, the book is full of striking images, including a reference to a moth-eaten jumper that inspired me the idea for the cover design.