When I started writing this book in early 2019, it was, in part, to convince myself that collectivity had value; that all the broken shit aside, it still meant something, to seek out and foster a community. I wrote the bulk of this book in 2020, revised it in the early months of 2021. Like so many people, my family and I were displaced for a good amount of that time. I wrote this book at the kitchen tables and on the couches, sometimes hiding in the bathrooms, of the family members and the friends who took us in, who lent us their empty houses and apartments, who co-homeschooled with us, who let me hold their babies and watched our kids. Thank you to Charley Todd, for a truly perfect solitary New York night; and thank you to Mae Fatto and Lucas Knipscher (and George and Agrippa), Katie Knipscher and Alejandro Strong, Colleen and Marc Weisman (and Emma and Maisie), Osvaldo Monzon and Mauricio Botero, and Marisa Strong Baskin and Duncan Baskin (and Clara and Elena). For this past year and for all the others that you’ve been there: thank you to Cristina de la Vega and Kenny Strong.

Thank you to Sarah Bowlin, for a thousand things but also for continuing to help me get to do this thing.

To Kate Nintzel: never have I ever had the shit kicked out of me quite so well or so brilliantly.

To Eliza Rosenberry, for championing this book so doggedly and so lovingly.

Also at HarperCollins, thank you to Molly Gendell, Ryan Shepherd, Dale Rohrbaugh, Pam Barricklow, Ploy Siripant, and Emily Snyder.

For taking such care with the sentences (and that note about frostbite), thank you, Molly Lindley Pisani.

For reading, but also for the extraordinary privilege of regular access to your brains, thank you, Kerry Cullen, Leslie Jamison, Miranda Popkey, Virginia Soles-Smith, Elena Megalos, and Marcy Dermansky.

Thank you, Yurina Yoshikawa, Sanaë Lemoine, Eliza Schraeder, and Rebecca Taylor.

Thank you, Victor LaValle, teacher, mentor, friend.

Thank you, Karen and Sam Steger.

To Colin Drohan and Stella Cabot Wilson, for putting up with me and also for lending me your names.

Thank you to my students, for continually showing me new ways to read and think and write.

Thank you for always picking up the phone, Rumaan Alam.

Thank you to Kayleen Hartman: I did my very best to give you what you asked.

To Peter, Isabel, and Luisa: it is the gift of my life to get to know and love you every day.

About the Author

LYNN STEGER STRONG is the author of Want and Hold Still. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, the Los Angeles Times, The Paris Review, the Cut, New York magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Catapult and Columbia University.

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Also by Lynn Steger Strong

• Want
• Hold Still

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.