About this item
“In writing this book I walked on hot coals, met a man making a weight-loss robot, joined a Healing Circle, and faced my debilitating fear of flying. Of all of these things, talking to my father about my mother’s death was by far the hardest.” The daughter of a widowed child psychologist and parenting author, Jessica Lamb-Shapiro grew up immersed in the culture of self-help, of books and pamphlets and board games and gadgets and endless jargon-filled conversations about feelings. It wasn’t until she hit her thirties that Jessica began to wonder: if all this self-improvement arcana was as helpful as it promised to be, why wasn’t she better adjusted? She had a flying phobia, hadn’t settled down, and didn’t like to talk about her feelings.
About the Author
Jessica Lamb-Shapiro was born in Washington D.C. in 1977. She is a graduate of Brown (BA) and Columbia (MFA) and has written fiction and non-fiction for McSweeney's, The Believer, Open City, Index Magazine, and other publications. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and New York Foundation for the Arts. She lives in New York City with an eight-year-old puggle.
