I Just Haven’t Met You Yet–Boston Launch

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning author and writing instructor TRACY STRAUSS for a discussion of her latest book, I Just Haven’t Met You Yet: Finding Empowerment in Dating, Love, and Life.

About I Just Haven’t Met You Yet

I Just Haven’t Met You Yet details Tracy Strauss’s dating history and her journey to dismantle the effects and stigmas of an abusive past, break free of destructive relationship patterns, and ultimately conquer her fear of truly being seen by the world, flaws and all. The author shares the transformative lessons she learned and self-empowerment she achieved while passing each hurdle along the way to finding the love of her life.

Tracy Strauss helps readers empower themselves by taking a challenging look at the ways the negative events of their lives, including sexual harassment and abuse, have shaped their self-perception and created obstacles to personal success, and how readers can change that troubled self-image along with their (love) lives.

I Just Haven’t Met You Yet is a modern-day journey of the heart. It is a story about taking big risks, changing old habits and beliefs about dating, and speaking back to the naysayers, especially that internal critic, the inner love saboteur. It is a prime mover and the only epistolary memoir cum dating/relationship essay book of its kind.

Praise

“Tracy Strauss answers the dreaded question “How are you still single?” with a narrative that’s funny, relatable, genuine, thought-provoking, and universal. She’s written more than just a book about dating; I Just Haven’t Met You Yet is a narrative about a person’s need to be seen—and understood.” —Meredith Goldstein, Boston Globe love letters advice columnist

“Tracy Strauss will break your heart. I defy you to put down this disarmingly charming book. A wry narrative turns in and out of light and deep shadow as if she were dancing. Utterly, beautifully honest. It reaches great heights and will make you wish she had always been your friend.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels

“In I Just Haven’t Met You Yet, Tracy Strauss reminds us of the power of words and memory and honesty and—most of all—the power of hope. This book has one of my favorite last lines that I’ve read in a long time. But don’t cheat and peek at it. Read every single one that comes before it so that when you reach the end, like me you’ll be smiling and crying in equal measure.” —Ann Hood, bestselling author of The Knitting Circle

Two Women on a Quest, with Belle Brett and Cheryl Suchors

Novelist Belle Brett (Gina in the Floating World) and memoirist Cheryl Suchors (48 Peaks, Hiking and Healing in the White Mountains) will read from their recently released books from She Writes Press, talk about common themes (e.g. risk-taking, women and their bodies), take questions from the audience, and sign books. Brett’s suspenseful novel, set in 1981 Japan, is about an ambitious young American. who, while serving as a bar hostess to support her daytime banking internship in Tokyo, slides into prostitution. Suchor’s inspiring memoir tells of her determined midlife goal to hike all 48 of the White Mountains’ 4000+ footers through injury, grief, and her own breast cancer.

Launch of GrubStreet’s Tell-All Reading Series

GrubStreet and GrubStreet’s Memoir Incubator Program invite you to attend the launch of TELL-ALL, the first Boston literary series devoted to all things memoir. The event features readings from Joan Wickersham, award-winning author of “The Suicide Index”; and emerging local writers Deborah Schifter, Beyazmin Jimenez, Angie Chatman, and Norman Belanger.

This event is free and open to the public.

Memoir Generator Open House & Info Session

Thinking of applying to the Memoir Generator? GrubStreet will host an informal Q&A session with instructor MICHELLE SEATON on Thursday, July 12th, 6:00-7:00 p.m., here at GrubStreet HQ, to answer any questions you have about the Generator, including the workload, the application process, what the program does and doesn’t entail, the schedule, the philosophy behind our approach, and anything else you have on your mind.

ALEXANDRIA MARZO-LESNEVICH in conversation with CELESTE NG

Porter Square Books hosts the paperback release of THE FACT OF A BODY: A Murder and a Memoir by ALEXANDRIA MARZO-LESNEVICH. The memoir has been named one of the best books of 2017 by Entertainment Weekly, Audible.com, Bustle, Book Riot, The Times of London, and The Guardian. An Indie Next Pick and a Junior Library Guild selection, it was long-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize and a finalist for a New England Book Award, a Goodreads Choice Award, and a Lambda Literary Award.

A Night of Memoir at Brookline Booksmith

Brookline Booksmith welcomes ANNA ORNSTEIN, reading from her memoir, My Mother’s Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl and PHYLLIS SKOY, reading from her memoir, Myopia.

Memoirist MARY KARR at Emerson

Emerson’s WLP Reading Series is pleased to present a Q&A and reading with MARY KARR.

MARY KARR is an award-winning poet and New York Times best-selling memoirist, and the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed, best-selling memoirs The Liars’ Club, Cherry, and Lit. Her latest books are The Art of Memoir, a master class on the fastest-growing literary genre which debuted at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller List and was blanketed in stellar reviews, and a book for graduates based on her acclaimed 2015 Syracuse commencement speech, Now Go Out There (and Get Curious). In 2015 Syracuse University awarded Karr an honorary doctorate in humane letters. Karr added songwriter to her pedigree with the release of Kin: Songs by Mary Karr & Rodney Crowell.

Q&A: 4pm
Piano Row, The New Charles Beard Room, 2nd floor
Emerson College, 150 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116

Reading: 6pm
The Bill Bordy Theater, 1st floor
Emerson College, 216 Tremont St., Boston, MA 02116

This reading is free and open to the public.

CHERYL SUCHORS: Book Launch and After Party for 48 Peaks

CHERYL SUCHORS will launch her memoir 48 PEAKS, Hiking and Healing in the White Mountains, at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, followed by a celebration upstairs at neighboring Christopher’s Restaurant.

Hiking is about the last thing forty-eight year old CHERYL SUCHORS is built for. Yet despite a flimsy body and fear of heights, she decides her mid-life success depends on hiking the tallest, most grueling White Mountains in New Hampshire. All forty-eight of them. In the ten years it takes her, she overcomes breast cancer and the loss of her hiking buddy. She’s forced to acknowledge that mastery alone isn’t enough—she must connect with friends and with nature to feel nourished and enriched, creating her own definition of success.

 

Release Party for “The Shell Game,” with KIM ADRIAN, JUDY BOLTON-FASMAN, and STEVE EDWARDS

The Shell Game is an anthology of carefully chosen, beautifully written, thought-provoking hybrid essays tackling a broad range of subjects, including the secrets of the human genome, the intractable pain of growing up black in America, and the gorgeous glow residing at the edges of the autism spectrum. Surprising, delightful, and lyric, these essays are destined to become classics of this new and increasingly popular hybrid form.

Cuando llegamos | Writing Immigration Stories

Immigration stories can be about origins, family separation, trauma, struggle, success, survival, secrets, personal and cultural reinvention, political upheaval and the search for home, freedom and country. Right now it feels especially urgent to make our own stories visible in all their complexity. But where to start? Your story might be remembered, imagined, or reconstructed. What does this mean for the process of writing memoir or fiction?

This short workshop is open to everyone, no matter your experience with writing. You will try out new ways to write or tell stories, discuss your work and ideas with others, and discover the work of other writers whose work deals with these topics.

Coffee and snacks provided. Families are welcome. The workshop is geared towards adults, but teens are welcome to participate with a parent or older relative. Simple activities will be provided for children.

This class takes place at the Boston Public Library’s Egleston branch, 2044 Columbus Avenue, Roxbury, MA 02119. If you have any difficulty signing up online, please call 617-695-0075.

Cuando Llegamos

Las narrativas sobre la inmigración pueden ser sobre los orígenes, la separación familiar, traumas, lucha, éxito, supervivencia, los secretos, la reinvención personal y cultural, las convulsiones políticas y la búsqueda de hogar, libertad y patria. En este momento hay un sentido especial de urgencia en cuanto a hacer visible nuestras historias en toda su complejidad. ¿Pero por donde empezar? Puede ser que tu cuento viene de la memoria, de la imaginación, o una reconstrucción de eventos en el pasado. ¿Que significa esto para el proceso de escribir crónicas o ficción?

Este taller corto está abierto a todos sin importar su nivel de experiencia con la escritura. Intentarás nuevas maneras de escribir o contar cuentos, conversarás con los demas sobre tu trabajo y tus ideas, y descubrirás la obra de otros escritores quienes escriben sobre estos temas.

Proveemos cafe y meriendas. Son bienvenidas las familias. El taller se orienta hacía los adultos, pero les damos la bienvenida a los adolescentes a participar junto con un padre o un pariente mayor. Habrá actividades sencillas para mantener a los niños ocupados.

La clase tomará lugar en el sucursal Egleston de la Biblioteca Pública de Boston, 244 Columbus Avenue, Roxbury. Cualquier dificultad para inscribirse en linea, favor de llamar a 617-695-0075.