Books for Dads (plus a giveaway!)

Happy (almost) Father's Day to anyone who celebrates. We're giving away a copy of Matthew Salesses' excellent "Craft in the Real World" this week, and we've got other book recs, too.

Hello and thank goodness it’s finally Friday. This is the free edition of Before and After the Book Deal. This is the last week of the anniversary sale (20% off for a year!). Click below to upgrade if you’d like.

If you have a father in your life you’d like to celebrate, or you are a father and you’d like to celebrate yourself, it’s not too late to pop into an independent bookstore to treat thyself (or others).

Here are my top picks for next Sunday, and beyond.

My reading recommendations for Dads and those who love them, courtesy of Canva.com without which I would still be building graphics on Pages and taking screenshots of said graphics.

ALSO A POET: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me Ada Calhoun

Ada Calhoun’s writer father is obsessed with Frank O’Hara, so much so that he started an ambitious biography on O’Hara…that he never finished. Ada decides to take up the mantle and finish the book herself, to unexpected results.

THE END OF EDDY Edouard Louis

If you haven’t read any of the stunning nonfiction by Edouard Louis yet, correct that! He’s like the male Melissa Febos of France. This fantastic autobiographical novel pulls no punches regarding the narrator’s experience growing up gay and impoverished in a violent family in conservative northern France.

BLOOD HORSES: Notes of a Sportswriter’s Son John Jeremiah Sullivan

This writer won the Whiting Award in 2004 for this book combining anecdotes about his gifted but eccentric sportswriter father with a historical look at the Thoroughbred racehorse industry. This book won’t be for everyone as it truly is written as a series of notes, but it’s the perfect book for someone who reads in fits and starts, and it’s packed with photos. It’s also a great fit for people from Kentucky.

ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California by Matthew Specktor

First of all, please note how much more effective Matthew’s descriptive subtitle is here than “memoir” or even “memoir-in-essays.” Subtitles can make or break nonfiction projects (see my prior post on that!) But back to what makes this book a perfect gift for Dad. Growing up, Matthew’s father was one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. Accordingly, Matthew thought he’d grow up having big time sway as well. But when this memoir opens, Matthew is divorced, his mother has just been diagnosed with cancer and his career is stalled. Instead of focusing on his own stagnation, Matthew investigates the lives of other Hollywood notables who experienced creative crises. Though it covers a dark subject matter (depression), this memoir manages to be a delightful and totally engaging read. Plus you’ll learn a lot of saucy details about writers like Joan Didion!

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Book Giveaway!

I love everything that Matthew Salesses writes, and his book Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (which is really more a life book, or a how-not-to-be-an-asshole book, than a craft book) is a perennial favorite. I have one copy to give away to a lucky paid subscriber with a US mailing address. To enter, please like this post and share in the comments about a writer/father in your life who would benefit from a book that Esquire calls a “firmament-shattering examination of how we teach creative writing.” I’ll leave the giveaway open until Sunday June 11th at 6pm EST with the aim to get the book to the winning father before June 18th. Only US mailing addresses are eligible.

• Six more days until applications to my writing retreat, Turning Points, close! All application info here. We’ll have more retreats in different places and price points in the future: follow @turningpoints_writers on Instagram to stay in the loop.

• On Wednesday, I wrote (God help me) about a positive experience I had with ChatGPT. It’s here if you want to check it out. My husband thinks I’m going to get cancelled because of this post, so please don’t prove him right.

• Thank you to everyone who answered my poll about whether or not you’d be interested in watching me build out a book proposal with another writer, in real time, here on Substack. More info about that in the next two weeks! Most of that content is going to be behind a paywall so it’s a good time to make use of the 20% off anniversary sale we’ve got going if you’d like to follow that particular journey.

• The writer Lilly Dancyger has a slew of excellent memoir classes coming up this summer for nonfiction writers. Her class list is here.

• If I contacted you about using your child POV narrator material, you will notice I haven’t published that post yet. I’m behind, forgive me!

Have a great weekend, everyone. Thanks so much for being here. Hope you get some great reading in this weekend. (I’m currently reading YELLOWFACE but I’m not sure I can finish— I’m finding it stressful and upsetting. If I died and someone stole a manuscript of mine to publish under their own name, I would return from the dead to spam them with one-star reviews.)

Courtney