Dark Sparkler

Dark Sparkler gathers poems about women who acted on screen and died young, more than twenty-five of them, from well-known figures like Marilyn Monroe to lesser-remembered performers. Amber Tamblyn, who has worked as an actress since childhood, writes from her own familiarity with fame and the price young women can pay when they are placed in the public eye. The poems take the form of elegies, eulogies and more heated laments, asking how audiences keep hold of these lives after they end.

The collection also includes twelve full-color artworks commissioned for the book from artists such as filmmaker David Lynch and cartoonist Adrian Tomine, and the images sit alongside the poems. The book closes with a long, personal epilogue in which Tamblyn turns the lens on her own life in Hollywood and on how she has managed to survive it.