When I discover an author I love, I will follow them across genres, formats, intended audiences…anywhere they go. Back in January 2024, I read We All Want Impossible Things with my book group, and loved it, so I went poking around to see what else this author had written. I found her middle grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, in which two kids, inspired by From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, hatch a plan to spend the night in an IKEA, and I loved that too. Then in July 2024, Sandwich made me laugh-cry and read so many parts aloud that my partner said to stop, he’d read the whole book himself (he did). And then I discovered Newman had also co-written a how-to book called Stitch Camp, which my kid and I both read, and two more how-to books for kids, How to Be A Person and What Do I Say? There are two more adult memoirs, Waiting for Birdy and Catastrophic Happiness, that I should probably pick up as well, and I’m eagerly awaiting my library copy of Wreck, the book Newman read from last night at Odyssey Bookshop (the event was organized by Odyssey, but as you can see from the photo, it was held in a nearby church to accommodate the size of the audience).

That’s how life is. You don’t yet know who you’ll become. -Catherine Newman, Wreck

Newman is a wonderful speaker, and if you’ve read her books (and her newsletter, Crone Sandwich), it’s hard not to feel as though you know her (in that admittedly parasocial way). She relayed a funny anecdote from that morning’s experience on Good Morning America (“Is that your hair? ….Great, great”) and read two sections from Wreck, followed by a Q&A. Audience members asked about her writing and outlining process, the semi-autobiographical quality of her writing, what she liked to read (Cammie McGovern, Lily King, and Samantha Irby), whether she read a lot as a kid (“Of course I read a lot as a kid. I mean didn’t we all? The nerdiest nerds”), and whether she might ever write more middle grade fiction (maybe, but One Mixed-Up Night didn’t sell as well as she hoped, and now she doesn’t spend as much time with middle grade kids, since hers are older, so…maybe not. But we can hope! I’ve got a ten-year-old she can borrow for research purposes…).