Hell Days

By Laura Elizabeth Woollett

When I think of my hell days, I think of crime scenes. Familiar sites, made uncanny with violence.

In the fluorescent tedium of a call center in 2018, acclaimed novelist Laura Elizabeth Woollett finds herself meticulously plotting her own death--until her period arrives, and equilibrium with it. After years of dismissing these monthly turns, she's diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Then, at thirty-three, she becomes pregnant and experiences a reprieve, but will it last?

Through case studies, interviews, extensive medical research, forays into history, true crime, and algorithmic rabbit-holes, Woollett looks beyond herself to assemble a chorus of PMDD sufferers, along with dedicated scientists and clinicians. Navigating the impossible terrain between a potentially fatal disorder and treatments that can be almost as dangerous, Hell Days is a testament to the precarity and dignity of life as a periodically suicidal person in an often-brutal world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1964992516
• ISBN13: 9781964992518
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Scribe Us
• Length: 256 Pages