E.B.'s Notes & News: May 2023 💚🍹🐢
Notes & News: May 2023
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Have I ever sent a newsletter out on Cinco de Mayo before? Who knows! I mean, I know, I could figure it out, but do I want to? Nah. Let's savor the mystery. Enjoy!
Regardless, as always, you can find what I've been writing, reading, some causes I care about, the events I have coming up, and the exciting things my friends and pets have been up to.
xoxo,
E.B.
Header image is part of an illustration by John Jay Cabuay.
People & Places to Support:
Please consider donating to Small Press Distribution's GoFundMe! As my friend and editor Brian Hurley wrote in an email to the Fiction Advocate community:
One of the least glamorous -- but totally crucial -- parts of the book industry is distribution. If you're a Fiction Advocate author, how does your book get from the printer to a store where readers can buy it?
The answer is Small Press Distribution, a 50-year-old non-profit whose mission is to make exceptional indie books available widely. If you love poetry, LGBTQ+ lit, and award-winning books that come out of nowhere and take your breath away, then you love the books distributed by SPD.
Right now, SPD needs our help. It's time to upgrade their systems, move thousands of books -- including yours -- to a new warehouse, and expand the range of services they can offer. So they're holding a fundraiser. And I would be very grateful if you would make a donation.
Here's everything you need to know about the fundraiser, and a link where you can donate.
Another way you can help is by sharing this news with people who love to read and asking them to donate. Here's an example that you can simply retweet if you like.
Thanks in advance for helping indie publishing and Fiction Advocate thrive.
Writing Notes & News:
Thank you to everyone who continues to give Good Grief such loving coverage! Since last month, I was featured on the podcast A Fiber Life as part of a beautiful episode about coping with the deaths of animals (see above). A fun fact: Lisa Mitchell, the host of A Fiber Life and co-owner of Aliento Luxury Fiber Farm on Whidbey Island, Washington, with her husband Greg Hudson, found out about my book because Sandi Farris, one of the veterinarians featured in chapter three of my book, who has her own veterinary practice on Whidbey Island, posted about Good Grief on Facebook. I guess Whidbey Island is a pretty small place! You can listen to the podcast episode here.
I also got to talk to Rebecca Soffer, co-founder of Modern Loss, about coping with the loss of a pet as part of the 1-800-Flowers.com Light After Loss series on Facebook. Another fun fact: a mutual friend of mine and Rebecca's is the great Sara Faith Alterman, who had an essay in the Modern Loss anthology that eventually turned into her memoir, Let's Never Talk About This Again. The world is a pretty small place in general, I guess! Anyway, you can watch my conversation with Rebecca here.
Oh, and I just realized that the TEDxWellesleyCollege talk I gave about "Why Everyone Should Talk About Pet Death" is up on YouTube! Thank you to Jaime Tracewell for coordinating that great event, and for all of my co-TEDx-ers. All of your talks were amazing! You can watch them all here.
Plus Good Grief got a shout-out in the HarperCollins Bookperk newsletter! You can currently buy the Good Grief ebook on the HarperCollins website for only $1.99 so get it at that price while you can! (Visit the Good Grief page on my website for a complete list of all media coverage for Good Grief.)
I don't have a lot of new writing to report this newsletter, but in case you missed it, please check out my new interview series Non-Fiction about Non-Humans on Fiction Advocate! So far I have had four interviews published: my first interview was with Bethany Brookshire, my second interview was with Sabrina Imbler, my third interview was with Erica Berry, and my fourth interview was with Tove Danovich. My fifth interview, with Karen Fine, will be published on 5/16/23!
For Wellesley, I have recently written two senior snapshots: this one about Lindsay Strong '23 and this one about the five members of the class of 2023 who work in biology professor Vanja Klepac-Ceraj's lab. Plus, I wrote and published this story about alums who majored in the humanities while at Wellesley but now find themselves working for STEM organizations.
Events Notes & News:
The events continue!!!! Be sure to check the events page on my website for the most up-to-date information, plus links to recordings of some of my previous events.
UPCOMING 2023 EVENTS:
NOTE: all events are in person unless labeled ***VIRTUAL***
NEXT WEEK! Thursday 5/11/23, 7:00pm EDT: Save the date for a very special “dog authors” event at Newtonville Books featuring Annie Hartnett, Jenna Blum, Karen Fine, and yours truly! Well-behaved dogs are welcome. There will be treats!
THE FOLLOWING WEEK! Tuesday 5/16/23, 7:00pm EDT: I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that I get to be in conversation with Erica Berry to discuss her masterpiece Wolfish at All She Wrote Books! More info and registration link here.
Sunday 6/11/23, 2:00pm EDT: Honored to be a guest in Ken Barringer‘s summer course at Lesley University, Division of Counseling and Psychology. While this talk is only open to Lesley students, you can hear my conversation with Ken on his podcast “Grief in Brief.”
Tuesday 6/20/23, 7:00pm EDT: I will be celebrating the launch of Soccer Grannies: The South African Women Who Inspire the World by Jean Duffy, my former GrubStreet student. I will be in conversation with Jean and Soccer Grannies founder Beka Ntsanwisi as part of the Grubbie Debut Author Series at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition in the Seaport!
TEACHING AT GRUBSTREET AGAIN! SORT OF! Wednesday 7/19/23, 7:00pm EDT: I will be teaching a special seminar as part of GrubStreet‘s Craft Talk Series: ‘Writing Through Darkness (and How to Take Care of Yourself During It)’. More info and registration link here. This talk will be held at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition in the Seaport.
Thursday 10/19/23, time TBD: I am over the moon to get to be part of the Cary Library Literary Cafe Series, an author series that happens at the library in my hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts! The very library I grew up going to! And even more exciting, I will be in conversation for this with Neema Avashia. Stay tuned for more info!
Reading Notes & News:
Not going to lie, I read a pretty weird assortment of books since I emailed you last month... enjoy??? I know I enjoyed them all! Fuzz by Mary Roach (see above for a detail from the cover), Waco by Jeff Guinn (for my dark books book club), Small Game by Blair Braverman, Navigate Your Stars by Jesmyn Ward, and Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li (also for my book club), plus I am currently (finally!!!!!) reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Also, these are not books, but three other things I read that I cannot stop thinking about, two serious and one not:
This poem by Adrienne Maree Brown that was featured in Ann Friedman's on 4/21/23.
This essay in The New York Times by Roxane Gay on the murder of Jordan Neely: "Whether it’s mass shootings or police brutality or random acts of violence, it only takes running into one scared man to have the worst and likely last day of your life."
This piece on Romper by Samantha Darby about "Big Bow Girls". It absolutely destroyed me. It's freakishly accurate. I've never felt more seen by a piece of writing before in my life.
Plus a baker's dozen books I think you should consider reading/buying in 2023:
Wolfish by Erica Berry (out now!)
Paperback version of Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett (out now!)
Paperback version of Atomic Anna by Rachel Barenbaum (out now!)
The Other Family Doctor by Karen Fine (out now!)
Under the Henfluence by Tove Danovich (out now!)
A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung (out now!)
Now These Three Remain by Sarah Dickenson Snyder (out now!)
The Possibility of Life by Jaime Green (out now!)
The Wager by David Grann (out now!)
Emptying the Nest by Morgan Baker (out 5/2)
Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby (out 5/16)
The Hunt by Kelly J. Ford (out 7/25)
Rogue by Mona Awad (out 9/1)
Friend Notes & News:
Look at all these incredible things happening with my friends, especially Karen Fine and Tove Danovich! They're absolutely crushing it!!!!
Lefty Herman, one of Seymour's dog BFFs, was featured in NATIONAL FUCKING GEOGRAPHIC! Yes! Glamour shots of Lefty (see above) that were taken by photographer Kholood Eid as part of her Wet Nose Pawject were on the Nat Geo Instagram to celebrate National Pet Day. Janna Herman, you must be so proud.
My friend and UMass Boston professor Paul Dyson was featured in the UMass student newspaper about running the Boston Marathon in honor of Krystle Campbell.
Shweta Ganesh Kumar recently had a beautiful short piece in the Metropolitan Diary section of The New York Times.
Musician (and Wellesley alum!) Caroline Rose has been absolutely destroying it with their new album The Art of Forgetting, with features in The New York Times and Nylon, among a million other great reviews.
Neema Avashia's Another Appalachia is the pick for the May 2023 meeting of the GrubStreet Book Club!
Kelly Ramsey wrote about pay cuts to federal firefighters for the Sierra Club.
Morgan Baker wrote about how to say goodbye to a beloved dog for Motherwell Magazine.
Loved this essay by Anri Wheeler featured on Boston.com about Marathon Monday.
Also loved this essay by Greg Harris about birdwatching in Cambridge.
Tove Danovich continues to crush it with this essay in The Guardian, this interview on NPR, and this conversation on Science Friday, among many other things!
And, wow, Jaime Green, whose book The Possibility of Life just came out this month, has been EVERYWHERE! There was this review in the Wall Street Journal, a feature in thee LitHub newsletter and this essay about alien anuses on the LitHub website, this essay on Slate, this interview on Science Friday, and many, many, many other great things!
Menagerie Notes & News:
In case you missed it, I made one of those Wes Anderson-style TikToks/Instagram reels feat. Seymour, because of course I made one of those, I've been waiting my whole life for this social media trend. (And by "my whole life" I mean ever since I saw The Royal Tenenbaums in theatres in December 2001 when I was 14 years old.) You can watch the video here.