This cover was commissioned by Soft Skull and I think it turned out great. It’s based on JermIX’s street art installation Cascading Confession, which Jerm has described to me as the hardest thing he’s ever done. You can understand why. It’s a poem about a painful set of young adult experiences, laid over the pages of his autobiography. The poem is “cascading” into place with letters falling from above.
When I first saw this work in real life, I remember thinking: this is a better artistic representation of the writing process than I’ve ever seen before. It captures the difficulty and the hope.