How does one put aside grief to finish their late friend’s book? That was the conundrum Leslie Jamison faced when completing Rebecca Godfrey’s novel following her death from lung cancer in 2022. Jamison is best known for her essay collections “The Empathy Exams” and “Make It Scream, Make It Burn” and her unflinching memoirs “The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath” and “Splinters,” published earlier this year. Godfrey was the author of the novel “The Torn Skirt” and the harrowing nonfiction book “Under the Bridge,” which was adapted this year into a Hulu limited series starring Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough — playing a dramatized version of Godfrey.
“Peggy,” a fictionalization of heiress and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim’s life, is Godfrey’s third and final book, which she wrote during the final decade of her life. She died before she could complete the last act. That’s where Jamison stepped in.
The two met at Columbia University School of the Arts, where Jamison directs the Master of Fine Arts nonfiction concentration and Godfrey taught a unit on anti-heroines. Jamison describes the class as an “institution” within Columbia. “An anti-institutional institution,” she laughs.
It’s for this reason that Godfrey was drawn to Guggenheim. “Rebecca was interested in women who disrupted things. Peggy was a bit of a disrupter.
She liked artists that a lot of people didn’t like. She lived as she pleased. “Part of what makes a.