GROSS ANATOMY

Mara Altman's GROSS ANATOMY - an honest, funny, neurotic, and totally gross love child of Mindy Kaling and Mary Roach.

Mara Altman's volatile and apprehensive relationship with her body has led her to wonder a lot of stuff over the years. Like, what's the deal with body hair? And why wasn't evolution smart enough to build us with buttholes made out of something more durable, like titanium? These and questions like them have led to the comforting and sometimes smelly revelations that constitute GROSS ANATOMY, an essay collection about what it's like to operate the bags of meat we call our bodies. People are fascinated and hungry to know more about their own bodies. Especially the gross parts.

Divided into two sections, "The Top Half" and "The Bottom Half," aptly named to describe the bodily regions on which they focus, Altman takes the reader on a wild and mildly relatable journey from head to toe, exploring such dynamic and oft neglected characters as the armpit, vulva, guts, hair, and blood.

A combination of personal anecdotes and research with added elements of science, history, and anthropology, GROSS ANATOMY holds up a magnifying glass to our beliefs, practices, biases, and body parts and reminds us that we all have 'em. Even the gross ones.

AUTHOR PLATFORM: Mara Altman has written popular articles for The New York Times, Salon, and New York Magazine and is the author of six bestselling Kindle Singles. One of them, Bearded Lady, which inspired the idea for GROSS ANATOMY, has been downloaded over 30,000 times and was chosen as an Amazon Short. Mara also performs stand-up comedy and is a natural in front of crowds.

ADVENTURE JOURNALISM: Mara made herself a full-fledged guinea pig for this book: She attended a menstruation retreat, participated in a topless bike ride, and went to a nudist colony at seven months pregnant with twins.

RELEVANT MORE THAN EVER: There is a brighter spotlight on body positivity in pop culture today more than ever, and GROSS ANATOMY will fit right in with this trend while also bringing fresh research and detail to the conversation.

GUILTY PLEASURE READING: Whether it's pimple popping or wart freezing, admit it: you're kind of into it. Okay, well, those of us who are into it are very into it. Call it a culty audience of sickos.

CALLING ALL TRIVIA FANS: Ever wanted to know why blood makes people faint or if you can still have anal sex if you're hemorrhoidal? The answers to these questions and many, many more are in here. Warts and all.

THIS TOPIC SELLS: Bestsellers like Why Do Men Have Nipples? and Stiff are smart, universal books about intimate subjects: our bodies. GROSS ANATOMY has the appeal of these books with a contemporary, women-focused spin.

Mara Altman is the author of Thanks for Coming. She writes about issues that embarrass her (i.e. chin hair), because she has found that putting shame on the page diffuses the stigma, leaving her with a sense of empowerment and freedom. She lives in San Diego, California.