"These essays are a woman's journey, but most of all, they are so compassionately about being human. Many who want to leave what they know too well to find themselves will read this book."
—Karen Salyer McElmurray, author of I Could Name God in Twelve Ways: Essays

"Marie Manilla's story is a quintessentially American one, though not one we hear enough: a story that embraces the wild if not wicked pluck and resolve of a young girl and woman always having to learn the rules of the game—in love and loss, at home and in places far away and unknown—without losing herself in the process. It's also rare and compelling to see in depth how a writer came into being. Such development on the page requires real intimacy and trust with the reader, which Manilla exercises again and again in This Is a Game I Play—even as she acknowledges the honest struggle and high stakes of being vulnerable in a culture that considers vulnerability an easily exploitable weakness."
—Rachael Peckham, coauthor of Flight 932: The 1970 Marshall Plane Crash and the Story of an American Town

"Hard to imagine a memoir any better than this: heartfelt, courageously honest, and unsettling, yet glowing with humor and a deft detailing of memory that makes it all come vividly to life. These linked vignettes are masterpieces of concise and poetic prose that breathtakingly drive forward a narrative pulse befitting a suspense novel. Surely as fine a memoir as I've ever read—highly recommended!"
—Marc Harshman, author of Dispatch from the Mountain State: Poems and poet laureate of West Virginia

"This razor sharp and dazzling memoir confirms that Marie Manilla is one of Appalachia's greatest writers. Manilla turns the pen on self to reveal the dangers, the joys, and the triumphs of becoming a woman in an ever-changing world. I couldn't look away from her beast within that follows her through transitions of love and death and reinvention. An undeniable winner of a book from a master of the craft."
—Jonathan Corcoran, author of No Son of Mine