Renée K. Nicholson talks about her new memoir-in-essays, “Fierce and Delicate”

Renée Nicholson’s professional training in ballet had both moments of magnificence and moments of torment, from fittings of elaborate platter tutus to strange language barriers and unrealistic expectations of the body. In “Fierce and Delicate” she looks back on the often confused and driven self she had been shaped into and finds beauty in the small roles she performed. When, inevitably, Nicholson moved on from dancing, she discovered that she retained the lyricism and narrative of ballet even as she negotiated life with rheumatoid arthritis. “remarkable... as breathtaking and beautiful as ballet itself” – Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire