The Yesterday Project

Literary Nonfiction. THE YESTERDAY PROJECT finds Ben Doller and Sandra Doller undertaking a seemingly simple, stripped-down, though thoroughly brave and highly personal blind collaboration. Each separately wrote a document recording the previous day, every day, for 32 days, without sharing their work over the summer of 2014 in the shadow of a diagnosis of life-threatening illness: Melanoma cancer, Stage 3. The resulting work is a declaration of dependence—a relentlessly honest chronicle of shared identity and the risks inherent in deep connection.

"Like a complex game, the secrets of a relationship translate across an invisible barrier, combining into a beautiful third voice, the voice of a couple in crisis and reawakening, the book of that voice."—Thalia Field

"Even while we read the poetic reminiscences of meals and outings and activities, we also see what is ached for, what is missing. We get two sides to the same glorious coin and witness, through an elegant and sacred literary communion, how two lives are one."—Jenny Boully

Ben Doller is the author of Fauxhawk, DEAD AHEAD, FAQ, and Radio, Radio, winner of the Walt Whitman Award. Along with the poet Sandra Doller, he has published two collaborative books. He is an associate professor of writing and literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Sandra Doller's books include LEAVE YOUR BODY BEHIND, ORIFLAMME, CHORA, and MAN YEARS, and two chapbooks: MYSTÉRIEUSE by Éric Suchère (translator) and Memory of the Prose Machine. The founder & editrice of 1913 Press & 1913 A JOURNAL OF FORMS, Doller has taught at Hollins University and Boise State University, and she currently teaches film, literature, and writing at Cal State-San Marcos. She lives in California.