Summer Reading and Writing

August 2 - online - Northwestern Summer Writers Conference

Yesterday I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Mind Body Green, and the scientist being interviewed (Arthur Brooks - I think this was his name) said that writing lists is key to keeping our lives (and our moods) manageable.

We’re in the season of the summer reading list and to add to the chorus, I’m sharing a few lines about what I’ve read this last month and am currently reading.

- Melissa Fraterrigo’s excellent forthcoming memoir in essays, The Perils of Girlhood (University of Nebraska Press, pub date 9.1.25). The author merges cultural critique with personal narrative, and this book is very smart, sometimes harrowing, and highly engrossing. (Melissa also writes

Between the Lines with Melissa Fraterrigo

here on Substack.)

- Joyce Hinnefeld’s linked story collection The Dime Museum, which will be published on August 12 by Unbridled Books. (I’m really getting into these stories, which are set across several decades in the U.S., Portugal, and Italy. Interview with Joyce forthcoming later this summer.)

- Ada Calhoun’s memoir/quasi-biography of her father (art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl) and Frank O’Hara, Also a Poet. Ada is such a sharp observer and entertaining writer, and the interview excerpts with well known writers and artists are revealing and sometimes very funny.

- Yesterday I finished Amy Stuber’s debut story collection Sad Grownups, which recently won PEN’s Robert W. Bingham Award. It was published by Stillhouse Press, a publisher helmed by students in George Mason University’s writing program. Stuber’s stories are irreverent, funny, and very wise about the human tragicomedy. I loved this book.

- Even though I bought it when it came out last September, I’m only now getting to it: Sally Rooney’s newest novel Intermezzo. I have about 100 pp left, and it’s holding my interest, but my favorite of her books is still Normal People - which I couldn’t put down.

- Richard Babcock’s new novel, A Small Disturbance on the Far Horizon - so well written and poignant and set in Nevada in the 1950s, the era of nuclear bomb testing - is out on July 15. I highly recommend it. I’ll be publishing an excerpt of an interview I did with Babcock for Newcity Lit later this summer too.

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Upcoming Bookish posts include an interview with fiction writer and One Story editor Lena Valencia, author of the story collection Mystery Lights (Tin House) - such good stories, some of them quite eerie - and July’s agent list. A preview of June’s agent list is accessible here. Bookish subscriptions are currently 25% off.

If you’re looking for an affordable writers conference you won’t have to travel to, allow me to suggest the Northwestern Summer Writers Conference on Saturday, August 2, fully online. I’ll be teaching a class on publication basics.

Different registration options are available: one craft workshop ($30), three ($70), or the whole day ($125). Manuscript consultations are available for $135.

The conference’s landing page can be found here.

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Postscript: I’ll be leading a writing retreat April 26-May 2, 2026 for Foreword Retreats in Bordeaux, France. The retreat I led in the same location last month (and wrote about last November for Bookish) was one of the best experiences I’ve had as a writer-teacher and traveler. The retreat is held at a chateau in the town of Blaye on the Gironde River, about 45 minutes north of Bordeaux. More information available here, and please drop me a note if you have additional questions. Registration deadline is September 28.