uncomplicated hymns

I look for uncomplicated hymns, but love has none.

-Anne Sexton

(fun fact: the name of my senior thesis in college was An Uncomplicated Hymn)

Publication Day!

I’m so thrilled that On Being 40(ish) is in the world today!  I’m really proud of this book and can tell you categorically that the pieces therein will make you laugh, cry, and relate.

There are two launch events scheduled, and if you live in New York or Boston I hope you will come! I will be at both and would love to see you.

February 5th (today) at 7:30 at WORD in Brooklyn.  Sophfronia Scott, Jill Kargman, and Lee Woodruff will be there.

February 11th at 7:00 at the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge.  Sophfronia Scott, KJ Dell’Antonia, Jessica Lahey, and Catherine Newman will be there.

I love the pieces in this book, and I’m incredibly pleased that early reviews suggest that others do too.  This book seems to be striking a chord!  Among many others, On Being 40(ish) was mentioned last weekend in The New York Times and in New York Magazine.

Three essays from the book have already been published, and I know they’ll give you a small taste of the wonders contained within On Being 40(ish)‘s pink covers:

I Became an Actress at Thirty-Nine by Jill Kargman ran on Bloom

Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email by KJ Dell’Antonia ran in the New York Times

What We Talk About When We Talk About Our Face by Sloan Crosley ran in Elle

 

wondrous woven magic

My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the ever-changing view
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.
-Carole King, Tapestry

a collision of IRL and online friends

I absolutely loved hearing Dani Shapiro read from and talk about Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love last week at Brookline Booksmith.  It’s not a secret that I adore Dani’s work and have reviewed many of her books here.  I’m also honored to call her a teacher.  She participated in my old Present Tense blog series many years ago.

My favorite book of Dani’s remains Devotion, and it’s not an overstatement to say that that book changed real and substantial aspects of how I inhabit the world.  She gave me permission, in some ways, to live the questions.  I don’t have answers, and that’s ok.

It was a treat to attend Dani’s event with one of my very oldest and dearest friends, Jessica.  I’ve written about Jessica before, and it’s a huge joy that she and her family moved to a town near ours last year.  She has taken a class with Dani before too (I’m waiting for Jessica, a gorgeous writer, to publish a book!) and we went together to the event in Brookline.

The whole night was an interesting collision of real-life and online friends.  I sat next to a friend I’ve known since I was 12, long before the internet existed. Another friend I knew first in person and then online was there.  I was listening to a mentor who I met online and have since gotten to know in real life speak.  I saw and met several friends that I’ve first connected with online: Jessica Braun, Laura McKowen, Rebecca Pacheco, Jennifer Blecher.

The evening was a wonderful swirl of real and online life, and reminded me that there are real relationships to be made in each. The online world gets a tough rap, I think, and there are certainly risks to digital communication.  But I also think genuine relationships can be seeded there, and I’m grateful for the people I’ve encountered here and on Instagram and elsewhere who have become real friends.

What has your experience of online friendships been?

I highly, highly recommend Inheritance if you have not read it yet.