The Only Way Out Is Through: Essays

By Katie Jean Shinkle

The Only Way Out is Through chronicles the way in which we archive the Other in queer relationships: Through images, through memories, through narrative, and through recollection. In the midst of queer heartbreak and the exploration of desire-gone-wrong, fueled by addiction, reckoning of identity, and unearthing of secrets that keep us unseen, this chapbook-length essay follows a slowly unraveling break-up. As the narrator and the Other traverse the painstaking journey of realizing the relationship is over, the essay explores how secrets make us sick, how remaining unseen keeps us repressed, and how love sometimes is not enough to save the other person from themselves. Following the break-up to its end reveals more than simply an ending, but a freedom and new beginning for the narrator as the question gets answered: How does one make it through the other side of devastating loss? The answer is: The only way out is through.

The Only Way Out Is Through is a hauntingly elegiac meditation on the unyielding desire to start over."

-eileen elizabeth espinoza, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1946303127
• ISBN13: 9781946303127
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: YesYes Books
• Length: 42 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.5" x 8.0"