In 1986, Kirkland, along with her then husband Greg Lawrence, published "Dancing on My Grave", a memoir chronicling her artistic transformation from George Balanchine's "baby ballerina" to one of the more acclaimed ballerinas in her generation. The book described in detail her struggles with her domestic family problems, sibling rivalry, anorexia, bulimia, plastic surgeries, drug addiction, her quest for artistic perfection, and her complicated love affairs with Mikhail Baryshnikov and numerous other men, most of whom she encountered in the ballet world. "Dancing on My Grave" was dedicated to Joseph Duell, a dancer with the New York City Ballet who committed suicide in 1986, in hopes "that the cry for help might yet be heard".