E.B.'s Notes & News: July 2025 😎📚📝🧨🇺🇸🎆☀️🌭🍉🐢
Less than four months until my book comes out in paperback!
Notes & News: July 2025
Well, I guess I’m playing it fast and loose with the timing of this newsletter.
Originally I was aiming to send it out on 7/4/25, because of the whole “first Friday of the month thing” from Newsletter 1.0 a.k.a. the pre-mom life newsletter era. But then it was a holiday and I was trying to be a present, engaged parent and enjoy trying to force my kid to love the beach as much as I do and so that Friday got away from me.
Then I thought, okay, I’ll send it out the following Friday, on 7/11/25, because that day is pretty exciting because FOUR MONTHS from that day my book comes out in paperback, which is so wild. Four months?! That’s nothing! And then guess who came down with the stomach flu and spent Thursday night and all weekend throwing up??? You guessed it!!!
And then I was like okay I’ll do 7/18/25, it’s still a Friday to keep with the tradition of things, I will totally get it out this day and then… just, man, time is a slippery bitch.
So, here we are. It’s a Tuesday. It’s 7/22/25. There is no significance to this day, it’s not even in the first half of the month, it just happens to be the day I finally got my act together to finish this newsletter. Oh well! At least this is coming out sometime in July! And who knows when I will send out my next newsletter?! Will it be back to the first Friday of the month? (Lol no because that’s next week!!!) Will it show up on 8/11/25, THREE months out from my paperback pub date? Will I completely drop the ball on sending a newsletter in August entirely? Who knows?! Gonna keep you on your toes!
xoxo,
E.B.
Hope Notes & News:
This section of my newsletter is dedicated to my amazing, caring, hardworking friend Mary Cate Zipprich who always keeps me up to date on the latest horrors happening involving immigrants and ICE . I’m so often under water with the terrible higher education news that I have to track for work that I can’t keep up with the other fucked up stuff happening in different areas, so I’m grateful to Mary Cate for making sure I’m always informed about the immigration stuff.
Mary Cate shared with me the fact that only about 17% of U.S. GoFundMe campaigns for health care and emergency costs meet their goal, and she has been compiling a list of important organizations and GoFundMes specifically helping families who have loved ones who have been detained by ICE. Here are the places Mary Cate recommends you donate to right now:
Mary Cate first learned about Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores in New Bedford, MA by reading this Boston Globe article (see excerpt above) and then reached out to them to find out how to help. This is Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores’s GoFundMe to raise emergency funds for families impacted by ICE enforcement.
This is a GoFundMe supporting a Somerville Public School staff member whose ability to continue living and working in Somerville is now at risk.
Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network has a bond fund to help get people out of ICE custody.
You can sign petitions on the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition website.
LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of MA is doing great work.
And National Immigration Law Center is spearheading a lot of the legal legwork.
Any amount you can donate to any and all of these is so appreciated. Look at what a difference $233 can make.
Writing Notes & News:
As I mentioned above, somehow Good Grief will be out in paperback in just under four months on 11/11/25! WTF!!!! Please preorder it at your local independent bookstore, from Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, or even Amazon. Thank you for your support!!!!
I’d also like to thank Alix Long for having me on her podcast Wake The F*** Up. The show, which she co-hosts with her husband Dr. David Long, is the #1 grief podcast, and Alix and I had an emotional and thoughtful conversation about pet death. Give it a listen! It was an honor to talk with Alix about losing our beloved dogs.
For Wellesley, it’s been quiet this summer and I don’t have any new spotlight stories to share, though you can read my submission for the Wellesley in 150 story series now up on the website. (Are you a Wellesley alum/student/faculty/staff? You can submit your own Wellesley in 150 story, any time between now and 12/31/25!) Plus, tomorrow (!!!) the summer issue of Wellesley magazine goes up online, and you will be able to read my feature investigating some of Wellesley’s most famous myths and legends. It was SUCH a fun piece to write, and I’m so grateful to editor-in-chief Lisa Scanlon Mogolov for letting me take it on!
And save the dates PLURAL! I already have THREE very exciting events planned around the Good Grief paperback launch:
Saturday 11/15/25, 11:00am-3:00pm EST: A turtle-y terrific paperback launch party featuring Sy Montgomery and Matt Patterson and their new picture book, The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle. The event is 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, Sy, and Matt, a silent auction fundraiser for Turtle Survival Alliance, and a screening of a documentary about turtles! More info soon about tickets!
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.
Saturday 11/22/25, 1:00pm-3:00pm EST: A doggone delightful event 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, MA, where we will talk about the great canine loves of our lives.
Plus more things still in the making with the likes of Melanie D.G. Kaplan, Carla Fernandez, and more!
Reading Notes & News:
Mostly I spent July reading board books (see above) but I also want to give a shout out to Elissa Altman, author of Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, which I just started reading. (Thanks for the recommendation, Catherine O’Neill Grace!) I haven’t gotten very far in it yet because of course I haven’t, my life is in chaos, but what I have read so far is so good. As someone who is thinking about having her next book be about a particularly taboo topic (behavioral euthanasia), it is very liberating to read about someone else’s experience writing about something that usually feels off-limits. Also, Elissa’s Substack is great.
Friend Notes & News:
You people are so cool! Congrats on crushing it! Please share in the comments or in the subscriber-only chat other accomplishments you want to share with the group. Brag away!!!
Congratulations to Jaime Green on her forthcoming new book, At Home in the Stars, which was sold to Hanover Square Press by her agent who was also my high school classmate Caroline Eisenmann. The universe is enormous but the world is very small!
You can preorder Melissa Fraterrigo’s book The Perils of Girlhood: A Memoir in Essays, which comes out on 9/1/25!
Kelly Ramsey has been getting amazing press for her memoir Wildfire Days: A Woman, A Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West which was published last month. She did a Q&A on Newsweek, the book was reviewed in The Los Angeles Times, a podcast episode from the show Living Planet, and Kelly’s “absolute favorite review” from Shelf Awareness.
I love, love, love this Cognoscenti essay by Tove Danovich called “Every friendship is a love story.”
And Annie Hartnett’s latest novel, The Road to Tender Hearts, was included in People magazine’s list of “travel-themed books to bring along on your summer vacation.”
Menagerie Notes & News:
Terrence and Twyla love the heat wave weather and spend a lot of time walking around in the backyard in the sunshine. I’ve gotten pretty good at playing hide and seek with them when I need to bring them back inside for the evening. Last week though I briefly thought I had lost Terrence but he was just hiding really well. Can you find him in the above picture?
I think a book about behavioral euthanasia would be such an important contribution, especially from you and I hope you continue with that idea, despite it being such a tough and taboo subject.
fwiw i think the only folks paying super close attention to newsletter publishing schedules on here are the newsletter authors. publish on a tuesday! or a friday! at the beginning of the month! or the end! who cares?!