it's my birthday (weekend)! let's give away some books!
plus announcing some great 🥳️pre-order bonuses🥳️ for THE GOOD MOTHER MYTH
Hello there! Welcome to Write More, Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. I’m a poet and an essayist, and my most recent books are the poetry collection Pocket Universe and the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, which I edited with the poet Emily Pérez. My next book, The Good Mother Myth, will be out in January 2025, and you can pre-order it now! (And if you read down a bit, you’ll find out about the great bonuses you can get with your pre-order!)
It’s my birthday weekend1, and I’d love to give you all some presents. I’ve featured so many great books here recently—and now I want to give a bunch of them away.
To enter, comment below and tell us about a book you’ve read and loved recently and why. If you’ve got a particular book from the options you’re hoping to get, you can add that, or you can just let me surprise you. I’ll pick winners on Tuesday and reach out via email to get mailing addresses.
I’ll also be sending out a bunch of Write More postcards and stickers this week, so if you want to request some to celebrate the work you’ve finished so far this fall, there’s still time!
Here are the books I’m giving away:
📚 Rabbit & Juliet, a new YA thriller by Rebecca Stafford, who shared her genius tips for rewriting a whole novel after some tough feedback.
📚Cinderland, Shiner, and Mercury by Amy Jo Burns, who I was slated to be in conversation with for my town’s book festival, though I had to miss it because I was with my mom after surgery. I love all three of these books for their complex, complicated women and their thoughtful deliberation on how the places we love shape us.
📚The Age of Deer by Erika Howsare, a thoughtful and wide-ranging exploration of the wild animals who are our closest neighbors; Erika was featured, appropriately enough, in the good creatures series, where she shared advice on moving from poetry to prose and changing her writing process as her daughters grew.
📚Housemates by
, who contributed a tending column about writing friendship and shared a great prompt based on Craigslist roommate ads
📚Loose of Earth by Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn, who shared a prompt for writing our obsessions through images
, who told the most incredible story about a pregnant Plath devouring an entire meatloaf at W. S. Merwin’s French country house when I interviewed her for The Millions
to win a book, comment below and share something you’ve read and loved recently and which book you’re interested in. or just write surprise me!
🥳️🎉The Good Mother Myth pre-order bonuses🎉🥳️
And if you want to give me a birthday present, the very best thing you could do would be to pre-order my next book, The Good Mother Myth—and to say thank you, we have two really exciting bonuses: a signed bookplate and an invitation to a zoom party on Sunday, February 23rd at 2pm eastern on caregiving and creativity cohosted with . I’m so excited to be in conversation with Maggie about the many ways mothering breaks open our brains and how that can transform a creative practice. (If I might be so bold, I think my book would make a great gift for the moms in your life—you could order an extra copy for a friend or sister or your own mom for the holidays, then attend the zoom party together in the new year!)
You can order it anywhere books are sold—online through Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon, but the best way to support a writer is to order directly from your local independent bookstore, where a real live bookseller will take a look at the book and hopefully be inspired to stock a couple more!
After you pre-order, enter your info at this website to get the bonuses.
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. I’m so glad you’re here.
If Write More has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by pre-ordering my next book, The Good Mother Myth.
my sister, a genuine Leo, took to celebrating a 🌟birthday season years🌟 ago, and I’m stealing that from her. celebrating non-milestone birthdays as an adult can feel goofy, but I think it’s great to embrace a reason for lots of treats and relaxation.
Your upcoming book looks fantastic; it’s going on my list! 📚
I recently finished Fat Talk by Virginia Sole-Smith and loved it because it blew open the door for me to acknowledge and examine the diet culture messaging in my childhood and adult life. Now that my eyes are wide open I can’t help but see and hear these messages everywhere! Mentioning the book has been a helpful way to start conversations about anti-fat bias and diet culture with people close to me.
Also, happy birthday weekend! Living in Philly, if I were to choose a book to receive, it would definitely be Housemates. 🏠
Happy Birthday 🎉
I recently read All Fours by Miranda July, and I doubt the story will leave me. Being a mother, middle-aged-ish, and deeply weird— I found this narrative exquisite.