Katie Henry has been my role model since I was sixteen; thank you for doing this first and answering all my panicked questions. I hope to move through the world with a fraction of your grace and humor. Rob, thank you for the tour of Arthur Avenue. Emily Beyda read an early draft when I didn’t think I could write another word and gave me feedback that enabled me to keep going. Tessa Hartley housed me during that same nomad fall I began to really work on this; some of what’s here was written on her porch in New Orleans. Ezra and Nick Paganelli are the official keepers of my soul and sanity; thank you for snack cake and sips and scaloppine, for Sunday dinners and shouting. All anyone needs to know about Alyssa May Gold is that despite living together when we were nineteen, she’s still willing to be my friend. But on top of that, she is a force of nature, an incisive and feeling artist, and she has talked me down from countless emotional and creative ledges. My teachers Laura Slatkin and Christopher Trogan gave me many of the stories I love most, and a whole new language in which to consider them. Kathryn Grantham and the staff at Black Bird Bookstore have been an inimitable support as I edited; thank you for the privilege of spending my working days talking to people about books. And I would be remiss without thanking Fresh Direct the cat, without whose persistent weight on my feet I never would have been able to sit still long enough to finish even a single chapter.

I was not alone for any of this, even when I was, technically, by myself. Sam, loving you is the honor of my life. If all I had been given was you, dayenu.

And reader, I cannot believe you are here. I am grateful and humbled. Thank you is wildly insufficient.

Book Ends

THE FAMILY

Naomi Krupitsky

A Conversation with Naomi Krupitsky

Discussion Guide

The Family Playlist Curated by Naomi Krupitsky

Rosa Colicchio’s Minestrone Soup

A Conversation with Naomi Krupitsky

What inspired you to write The Family?

Sofia and Antonia came to me first. I got the image of this polar-opposite friendship, two little girls who grow up in adjoining apartments, who complement and contrast with each other. As they came into focus, the world around them grew also.