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Jennifer Battisti
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Off Boulder Highway
Jennifer Battisti—an ‘80s latchkey kid, now mother—transforms narrative into a pop-culture artifact filled with people as beautiful as they are broken, unexpected heroes like L.L. Cool J and Hulk Hogan, trauma, addiction, disaster, and ritualistic paths to redemption.
The poet Jennifer Battisti was a Las Vegas latchkey kid, with casino employee parents. Off Boulder Highway, her extraordinary memoir, some of it fictionalized, much of it beautifully poetic, all of it alarmingly real, makes the performative Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas seem like a sanitized Disney fantasy. Sloppy sex, meth addiction, blackout drunkenness — this is “Sin City” at its least romantic, most realistic. In less assured hands, the crushing working-class squalor might descend into lurid voyeurism. Battisti, a hugely talented describer of human frailty, is unafraid to tell the truth about her life and her town, making Off Boulder Highway one of the best books about Las Vegas (and the debased culture surrounding it) we’ve ever read.
- Michael Konik, author & filmmaker
Jennifer is selected as "Ones to Watch" by Nevada Public Radio's Desert Companion
Jennifer Battisti is a Las Vegas native. She won "Best Local Writer" by readers of Desert Companion (2019). Her chapbook, Off Boulder Highway, was released in 2021 (Tolsun Books). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Manzano Mountain Review, Thin Air Magazine, Coe Review, and The Briar Cliff Review.
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