“Joanne Jacobson’s work combines an unfailing lucidity with a richness of texture and an emotional depth rarely encountered in the current literary environment. As readers who become attuned to her inimitable voice, we often find ourselves in the intimate company of precisely observed human beings who seem to be in the process of slipping away, but who are invariably captured with affection in passing and held fast in memory. Her writing has the immediacy of lived experience and a quality of steady detachment that compels us to recognize the dimensions of awareness necessary if we are to make the most of our lives. In sum, hers is an achievement of a very high order.”
— Stephen Donadio, Editor-at-Large, New England Review
“Every Last Breath is a book in which every last word illuminates the mutable, mortal body we singly inhabit and commonly share. It speaks deeply to the human experience of incremental time and ongoing, subtle, threshold-crossing change. It is impossible to overstate the beauty and intelligence that imbues Joanne Jacobson’s meditation on the ecstatic and perishable condition of our lives.”
— William Merrill Decker, author of Kodak Elegy: A Cold War Childhood