In Juggling, Stewart Lawrence Sinclair explores the four-thousand-year history and practice of juggling as seen through his life as a juggler. Sinclair—who learned to juggle as a child and paid his way through college by busking—shares his experiences of taking up juggling after an episode of suicidal ideation, his time juggling on the streets, and ultimately finding comfort in juggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. In many ways, this is a book about loss and recovery. From his own juggling story to clowns braving military checkpoints in Bosnia and Rwanda to perform in refugee camps to contemporary avant-garde performances, Sinclair shows how the universal language of juggling provides joy as well as a respite from difficulties during hard times.

Stewart Lawrence Sinclair is a writer and editor whose essays, reportage, and narrative nonfiction have been featured in LitHub, Guernica, New Orleans Review, Creative Nonfiction's True Story, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at the City College of New York and juggles whenever he can.

Acknowledgments  xi
1. Cirque du Covid  1
2. The Three-Body Problem  9
3. La Strata  19
4. Historical Arcs  31
5. Isla Vista  44
6. 441  60
7. Makeup  65
8. Cascade  74
9. Lodi  90
10. Improvising  100
11. Mardi Gras World  103
12. Light-Hearted Humans  114
13. Cirque du Kabul  124
References  133