In her new nonfiction work You Tell the Stories You Need To Believe, queer novelist Rebecca Brown turns her attention to life's biggest questions: time, love, and how we endure.

Since 1984, and most known for a novel written and set during the AIDS crisis (The Gifts of the Body), Rebecca Brown has been on the forefront of the avant-garde of American letters.

You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe is an exploration of the meaning of life-as told through the cycles of the year, and the art that has been produced about each of the seasons.

As Brown fans know, her distinctive sentences are reason enough to read her. One of the gifts of this book is getting to read about the artists who inspire her-from Melville to Denise Levertov, from Stravinsky to the Monkees. Not to mention the cunning and imaginative ways mythology and religion enter the mix.