Jayson Greene (born 1981or1982) [1] is an American author, music critic and editor. He has served as a senior editor of online music magazine Pitchfork [1] and is the author of Once More We Saw Stars a memoir about the death of his two-year-old daughter in 2015. [2] The book, released May 14, 2019, [3] received a starred review from Publishers Weekly [4] and was named to lists of most-anticipated books of 2019 by Entertainment Weekly , the Observer, New York magazine's Vulture , Elle, Oprah Magazine and Bustle . [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
Reviewing Once More We Saw Stars for The New York Times , Alex Witchel praised the book as "a revelation of lightness and agility. That [Greene] managed to keep his facility for language during a period where it often disappears is a miracle. He has created a narrative of grief and acceptance that is compulsively readable and never self-indulgent." [11] Rolling Stone gave it four of five stars, noting that the story which "might be too bleak to face" instead is "an intensely moving, life-affirming story about a young couple moving through the darkest depths of grief together, making it up as they go along." [12]
Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a novel, for viewers to read and discuss each month. In total, the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
James Christopher Frey is an American writer and businessman. His first two books, A Million Little Pieces (2003) and My Friend Leonard (2005), were bestsellers marketed as memoirs. Large parts of the stories were later found to be exaggerated or fabricated, sparking a media controversy. His 2008 novel Bright Shiny Morning was also a bestseller.
Dani Shapiro is an American writer, the author of six novels including Family History (2003), Black & White (2007) and most recently Signal Fires (2022) and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion (1998), Devotion (2010), Hourglass (2017), and Inheritance (2019). She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Elle. In February 2019, she created an original podcast on iHeart Radio called Family Secrets.
Melissa Fay Greene is an American nonfiction author. A 1975 graduate of Oberlin College, Greene is the author of six books of nonfiction, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a 2011 inductee into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, and a 2015 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts.
Oprah Gail Winfrey, also known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
Let's Take the Long Way Home: a memoir of friendship is a memoir by Gail Caldwell (1951–). The memoir describes the friendship between the author and fellow writer Caroline Knapp who died at the age of 42 in 2002, and it takes place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Let's Take the Long Way Home was published in 2010. The title refers to their habit of taking the long way home so that they could continue their conversations.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is the 2012 memoir by the American writer, author, and podcaster Cheryl Strayed. The memoir describes Strayed's 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995 as a journey of self-discovery. The book reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0.
Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her 2021 debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her poetry collections include Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a 2014 New York Times Notable Book. Since 2019, she has been a contributing editor for London Review of Books.
Daniel M. Lavery is an American author and editor. He is known for having co-founded the website The Toast, and written the books Texts from Jane Eyre (2014), The Merry Spinster (2018), and Something That May Shock and Discredit You (2020). Lavery wrote Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice column from 2016 to 2021. From 2022 to 2023, he hosted a podcast on Slate titled Big Mood, Little Mood. In 2017, Lavery started a paid e-mail newsletter on Substack titled Shatner Chatner, renamed to The Chatner in 2021.
Glennon Doyle is an American author and queer activist known for her books Untamed,Love Warrior, and Carry On, Warrior. Doyle is also the creator of the online community Momastery, and is the founder and president of Together Rising, an all-women-led nonprofit organization supporting women, families, and children in crisis.
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is an American essayist. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2018 for her profile of white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof, as well as a National Magazine Award. She was also a National Magazine Award finalist in 2014 for her profile of elusive comedian Dave Chappelle. Her first book, The Explainers and the Explorers, is forthcoming from Random House.
Tara Westover is an American memoirist, essayist and historian. Her memoir Educated (2018) debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the LA Times Book Prize, PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, and two awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times ranked Educated as one of the 10 Best Books of 2018. Westover was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019.
Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis is a 2020 non-fiction book by Ada Calhoun. It builds upon her essay for O, The Oprah Magazine, "The New Midlife Crisis for Women". Calhoun interviewed more than 200 women and studied social trends to identify new roadblocks for Generation X women. The book was published on January 7, 2020, by Grove Press.
More Myself: A Journey is a book by American recording artist Alicia Keys, written with the assistance of writer Michelle Burford. The book is the first release on Oprah Winfrey's imprint An Oprah Book. The book appeared at number three on The New York Times Best Seller list for Hardcover Nonfiction and at number four for Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction. It also appeared at number seven on Publishers Weekly's list of the best selling Hardcover Frontlist Nonfiction books. In 2021, the book won the Audie Award for Best Narration by Author, while also being nominated for Best Audiobook.
The Meaning of Mariah Carey is a memoir by Mariah Carey, released on September 29, 2020. It was written with Michaela Angela Davis, and was published by Andy Cohen Books, an imprint of Henry Holt, as well as in an audiobook format read by Carey herself on Audible. The book navigates the complex racial, social, cultural and familial tensions associated with Carey's upbringing as a biracial woman in Long Island, New York. This is framed alongside first-hand descriptions of the singer's personal and professional triumphs and struggles, and is interspersed with fragments of Carey's songwriting output.
Claire Bidwell Smith is an American therapist and author who specializes in grief. She is known for her memoir, The Rules of Inheritance, as well as her books After This: When Life is Over, Where Do We Go? and Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief. Smith draws on the personal loss of both of her parents and on her profession as a grief counselor to help others navigate grief and healing.
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir is a 2021 memoir by Michelle Zauner, singer and guitarist of the musical project Japanese Breakfast. It is her debut book, published on April 20, 2021, by Alfred A. Knopf. It is an expansion of Zauner's essay of the same name which was published in The New Yorker on August 20, 2018. The title mentions H Mart, a North American supermarket chain that specializes in Korean and Asian products.
Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be: Essays is a nonfiction essay collection and memoir by American writer Nichole Perkins. The book was released on August 17, 2021, by Grand Central Publishing. It was recommended by Fortune, Bitch, and Buzzfeed News.
Allison Gilbert is an American journalist and author. She is the author and co-author of five non-fiction books including the biography with Julia Scheeres of Elsie Robinson, Listen World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman.