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It has been a hard pandemic so I'm starting a newsletter.

Every month, readers will receive a newly written personal essay by me. The first newsletter comes out on June 10.

To celebrate, my publisher is giving away from 1-800-Flowers to one subscriber who signs up by June 5!

The sweepstakes is open only to US residents (18 and over) but anyway can sign up for the newsletter.

Looking through the many true sentences in Hemingway's work, . A real pleasure speaking with Mark Cirino for One True Podcast!

I’m excited to announce , coming out this fall from Penguin Random House!

Oprah Daily had the story yesterday, revealing the book's lovely cover by Brooklyn-based graphic designer Anna Kochman. I couldn’t be happier with it. Visit Oprah Daily to learn more.

I was invited to select and read a story from The New Yorker’s archive for their Fiction Podcast, and discussed it with Fiction Editor, Deborah Treisman. I selected “Bravado,�� by William Trevor, which appeared in a 2007 issue of the magazine.

A few things I've been looking at, listening to, and doing these past months during the pandemic for comfort, entertainment, and even a little joy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout, and award-winning actress Laura Linney, . Broadway previews begin Jan 6.

Award-winning actress Laura Linney returns to Broadway in Manhattan Theatre Club's production of a haunting new solo play adapted by Rona Munro from the bestselling novel by Elizabeth Strout.

A sold-out sensation originally produced by the London Theatre Company at the Bridge Theatre in London, Ms Linney was hailed as "luminous" by the The New York Times, "genuinely phenomenal" by Time Out London, and the play was called "deeply affecting and heartbreaking" by The Observer.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit

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In case you missed my appearance on CBS This Morning with Oprah!

��My latest pick is Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again,�� Oprah says. “Ah, Olive. She teaches us so much about loneliness, judgment, aging, and loss. And empathy, too. I’m in awe of Strout’s ability to convey so much in so few words.”

Oprah has done so much to support readers and writers over the years. I am really thrilled and honored that she choose OLIVE, AGAIN as her next Oprah’s Book Club pick.

��Olive, Again is a tour de force. With extraordinary economy of prose �� few writers can pack so much emotion, so much detail into a single paragraph �� Strout immerses us in the lives of her characters, each so authentically drawn as to be deserving of an entire novel themselves. Compassionate, masterly and profound, this is a writer at the height of her powers”

��There is a moment in Olive, Again, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Olive Kitteridge , Elizabeth Strout’s best-seller of 2008, in which the novelist’s virtuosity is on full display. Kitteridge, an elderly widow by now and still living in Maine, spots a former pupil in a diner �� and approaches her to revive the connection. In the exchange that follows, one becomes aware of Strout’s sympathetic range��. ‘That was the first story that I wrote for Olive, Again,�� says Strout, cheerfully. ‘She just showed up and I saw her nosing her car into the marina; and I thought: Oh man, she’s back.�� She laughs with pure joy.”