Carmen Maria Machado

Machado is the author of In the Dream House, a memoir in which she recounts the events of an abusive relationship she had with a woman in 2012 while she was a graduate student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in Iowa City. After her girlfriend moved to Bloomington, Indiana shortly after they began dating, Machado drove there every other weekend to stay with her in the home she refers to as the Dream House. The relationship seems to have lasted about a year and involved extensive verbal and psychological abuse, including, most notably, reckless car rides in which Machado's girlfriend put both of their lives at risk. After they broke up, Machado dated and then married Val, a woman she met through her abusive ex-girlfriend.

Throughout the memoir, Machado recalls events from her young adulthood to provide a wider picture of her life and the circumstances...