E.B.'s Notes & News: GOOD GRIEF PAPERBACK PUB DAY! 🥳📚🐢🎉💀
My book is now available for $18.99 plus tax!
It’s here! It’s here! I thought this day would never come!
Seriously, how often does a book get a second life as a paperback OVER THREE YEARS after its initial publication? Very rarely! I feel so lucky and I am so grateful to everyone who helped make this happen, especially my (now former) editor, Ivy Givens. Seriously, thank you, Ivy. Good Grief has been so lucky to have you in its corner. Wishing you all the best as the new science editor at Basic Books! (And shout out to my new editor at Mariner, Jessica Vestuto for seeing this process through!)
Today is a good day!
xoxo,
E.B.
Hope Notes & News:
Today it feels fitting to feature the Turtle Survival Alliance a.k.a. the other/better TSA. My event this Saturday 11/15 is a fundraiser for this organization that does so much great work to help these, as the TSA puts it, “ancient, awe-inspiring creatures that are essential to our ecosystems.” Please consider supporting the TSA, or, better yet, buy a ticket to my event on Saturday (even if you can’t go!) and you’ll be supporting both the TSA and the West Newton Cinema, which has been a beloved community fixture for over 90 years! Better yet, buy a ticket and actually come on 11/15!
Writing Notes & News:
I mean, what else is there to say really other than Good Grief is out in paperback today??? Thank you to everyone who has show me so much love in the lead up to this paperback launch. I appreciate all of you — for preordering Good Grief, for sending me enthusiastic texts and emails, for asking me to do events, for showing up at my events, for stocking Good Grief in your bookstores and libraries, for telling everyone you know about my little book. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good Grief is available in paperback now because of all of you!
Now for some housekeeping: Did you preorder a paperback copy of Good Grief from Newtonville Books? Great! I’m heading over there later today to inscribe the books and then they will be ready for pick up or mailed off to your destination, complete with special limited edition Good Grief swag! I’ll also be leaving some of said special limited edition Good Grief swag at Newtonville Books, so if you head over there to buy a copy in the next week or two, you can snag some items then. I’ll also have it all available at all my upcoming events! (See below for more info on that.)
What is said special limited edition Good Grief swag? Let me tell you! In honor of the paperback launch, I created half-a-dozen postcards from some of my favorite pet cemeteries that are mentioned in the book:
Plus, I wanted to give the black and white goldfish illustration from the first chapter of Good Grief a little extra love this time around. Why should the animals on the cover get all the attention? Goldfish were my first pets, after all! So you can also pick up a fun *~*~*holographic*~*~* goldfish sticker:
Also, haven’t watched the Good Grief documentary yet, created by the super talented filmmaker friend Amber Celletti? What are you doing! It’s only four-and-a-half minutes long!
Events Notes & News:
• Saturday 11/15/25, 11:00am-1:30pm EST: This is my official paperback launch party and it’s going to be a turtle-y terrific event featuring Sy Montgomery and her new picture book, The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle. The event will be organized by Newtonville Books and hosted at the West Newton Cinema (if my name ends up on the marquee my high school self will absolutely die from joy) and it will feature a meet-and-greet with the famous Terrence and Twyla, author presentations followed by a Q&A with me and Sy, a silent auction fundraiser for Turtle Survival Alliance, and a screening of a documentary about turtles! Click here to buy your tickets for this event!
• Wednesday 11/19/25, 7:00pm-8:00pm EST: A literally awesome literary animal conversation with Sangamithra Iyer, author of Governing Bodies: A Memoir, A Confluence, A Watershed, which is coming out on 11/4/25! We’ll be at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition (in the Seaport!) and can’t wait to see you there! The last time Sangu and I were in conversation together was at the Boston Book Festival in 2019 a.k.a. another life. Click here for more information about this event.
• Saturday 11/22/25, 1:00pm-2:30pm EST: This event will be a doggone delight! I’ll be in conversation with Karen Fine, author of The Other Family Doctor, and Ellen Finnie, author of The Ten Perfections: Spiritual Lessons from a Life with Dogs at Tatnuck Bookseller in Westborough, where we will talk about the great canine loves of our lives.
• Saturday 12/20/25, 1:00pm-2:30pm EST: An author meet-and-greet and book signing with yours truly at Rozzie Bound Co-op in Roslindale! Come by and say hello and get a signed copy of Good Grief to give as a last minute Christmas gift!
• Wednesday 2/4/26, 7:00pm-8:00pm EST: ***VIRTUAL*** The Tewksbury Public Library, part of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium and in collaboration with the Minuteman Library Network, will be hosting a conversation between yours truly and Melanie D.G. Kaplan, author of Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research, which was published in October by Seal Press! Thanks to Tewksbury’s Community Outreach Librarian Robert L. Hayes for setting this up. More info soon!
Reading Notes & News:
Luca and I have been reading (“reading”) Good Grief together, which means he points at each animal on the cover and names it and then flips through the book looking for the animal illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. He is also a big fan of the paperback because there is a photo of me and Terrence on the back: “Mama tortoise!”
Friend Notes & News:
So proud of you people! Always! My friends are doing too many cool things to keep track of, as usual, so here’s just a smattering of things. Love you guys!!!
Kea Krause wrote an absolutely GORGEOUS feature for Bowdoin Magazine about the work the college is doing to preserve their pine trees. Read it here! Here’s the breathtaking opening, in classic Kea style: “The light in these woods wants to play—in shafts and speckles that squeeze through the canopy, casting spotlights that move and shift across the wooded floor. A lattice of needles and leaves over-head dapples the world below. It is a forest, but it is also shimmering river rock, grainy super 8, a salmon’s spotted back, a child’s kaleidoscope. In other words: it is a midsummer’s day in the Bowdoin Pines, a thirty-three-acre patch of forest on the northwest corner of the College’s campus.”
Want to read even more about trees on college campuses? Check out Grace Ramsdell’s lovely essay for Wellesley Magazine about our campus’s trees. This piece just won a Best of CASE District I Award! The citation reads: “The personal essay ‘Above All’ by Grace Ramsdell ’22 explores the ways that Wellesley College’s trees, with their enduring presence, connect past and present generations of students. This essay evokes a sense of nostalgia and connection with the College’s history, while underscoring the cyclical nature of life and growth.”
A lot of college/university magazine notes in this newsletter — Melanie D.G. Kaplan’s new book Lab Dog was featured in the Columbia Magazine! Did you see above that Melanie and I are doing a virtual event together in February, on Zoom through the Tewksbury Public Library? Save the date!
Menagerie Notes & News:
Every year, Richie and I celebrated Seymour’s birthday on 11/10, because that is the birthday of Seymour in Futurama. When I found out that Good Grief was finally going to be published in paperback on 11/11, the day after Seymour’s birthday, it felt like a little sign from him from the other side. I’ve been thinking about Seymour a lot lately, and if you have watched my friend Amber Celletti’s short documentary about me and Good Grief, you’ll see I’m wearing a special sweatshirt in it. It was an extraordinarily thoughtful gift from my friend Erin Greene, courtesy of SAVNYC, a really cool shop that does embroidery on upcycled apparel and accessories. Erin had the sweatshirt custom embroidered so Seymour would always be near my heart. I’m not crying, you’re crying! Love you, Erin, thank you. When I write in Good Grief about how important it is to find people who understand what it’s like to lose an animal you love, this is exactly what I mean.
Anyway, happy birthday, Seymour. Hope you’re chasing squirrels extra hard in dog heaven this week.