Bigger: Essays - Paperback

by Ren Cedar Fuller (Author)

• Finalist for the 2026 Firecracker Award in Creative Nonfiction
• Shortlisted for the 2026 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
• Featured on The Millions' Great Fall 2025 Book Preview

Winner of the 2024 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize, this large-hearted personal essay collection by Ren Cedar Fuller invites us to imagine a more generous way of being in the world, drawing on Fuller's experiences as a daughter, sister, mother, teacher, and patient.

A father's hurtful rigidity becomes slightly more comprehensible when viewed through a lens of neurodivergence, and a mother's well-timed lie allows her children to see an escape from fundamentalist strictures. Parents build support systems for their transgender child, and a disability that makes it impossible for the author to cry tears opens up new paths for expressing emotions.

With disarming charm and good humor, Fuller charts a clear-eyed path for not only accepting but celebrating differences of all kinds. Bigger explores how we want the world to be as large and open as possible for the people we love--and how this kind of love expands our own world too.

Author Biography

Ren Cedar Fuller is the author of Bigger: Essays, winner of the Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. She also won Under the Sun's Summer Writing Contest and her essays have appeared in HerStry, Hippocampus, New England Review, North American Review, and Under the Sun. Ren taught public school in California, Oregon, and Washington before founding a nonprofit early learning center near Seattle. She teaches parent education around Seattle and facilitates parent meetings at TransFamilies, an online support hub for families with gender-diverse children. She lives in Seattle with her husband, Jason.