Identity
The private self, the public self and the friction between who we are and who we are expected to be.
Book 03 · Forthcoming
The Original Me
A forthcoming memoir
A long-form reflection on identity, memory and becoming—an inquiry into what remains when inherited expectations, public roles and old versions of the self fall away.
About the book
Who were you
before the world answered?
*Anathema* is a coming-of-age memoir about identity, belonging, desire, and the long journey toward self-acceptance. Born biracial and gay in conservative Texas, Donovan Lord grows up caught between worlds—Black and white, working-class and aspirational, sensitive and defiant, visible and unseen. From childhood racism and family conflict to adolescence, sexuality, college, love, rejection, and a devastating romantic crisis, he repeatedly searches for proof that he is worthy of being chosen. Along the way, music, creativity, reinvention, and relationships become both refuge and mirror. But the more Donovan tries to become acceptable to everyone around him, the further he moves from himself. By twenty-five, the central question has changed. Instead of asking where he belongs, he begins to claim all of who he is. *Anathema* is ultimately a memoir about surviving exclusion, refusing to remain divided, and discovering that belonging begins within.
The Original Me is presented as Donovan Lord’s forthcoming long-form memoir: a book about the distance between the self we begin as and the identities we learn to perform. The project gathers memory, creative life, belonging, sexuality, ambition and reinvention into one central question: when every title, success, failure, expectation and protective story is stripped away, who is left?
This page is the book’s public beginning. The final synopsis, publication details and review material will evolve as the manuscript moves toward release.
Publishing & press inquiriesThe memoir’s territory
The selves we inherit.
The self we choose.
Memory
How the stories we repeat shape the meaning of a life—and how those stories change when viewed again.
Belonging
Race, sexuality, family, place and the lifelong search for rooms where the whole self can enter.
Reinvention
The roles we outgrow, the lives we rebuild and the courage required to become visible to ourselves.
Creative life
Architecture, art, music and writing as parallel languages for making meaning from experience.
Return
Not becoming someone new, but recognizing and reclaiming the original self beneath adaptation.
Advance praise & review copies
The conversation
begins here.
“Endorsements and early reader responses will be added here as the manuscript approaches publication.”Publishing inquiry ↗
“Booksellers, editors, podcasters and reviewers can register interest in advance material and future interview opportunities.”Request updates ↗
Agents · Publishers · Press
Help shape
the next chapter.
For representation, publishing, interview and event inquiries related to The Original Me, contact Donovan directly.
The complete library
Three books.
One unfolding story.
Move from heartache, through embodied attention, toward the original self.
Explore all three books