HOW TO CHANGE HISTORY, a new book of mine, will be published in March, 2025. I’ve been waiting to share this news until the official announcement was made. Yesterday, Publishers Marketplace published the following little blurb about the book.
HOW TO CHANGE HISTORY
By Robin Hemley
Non-fiction: Memoir
October 11, 2023
Robin Hemley's HOW TO CHANGE HISTORY, a linked essay collection grappling with the ways individuals and societies navigate history, especially traumatic histories, erasures, and the contradictions between the personal and the public, to Courtney Ochsner at University of Nebraska Press, in a nice deal, for publication in March 2025, by Malaga Baldi at Malaga Baldi (world).
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There are a lot of more important things happening in the world right now, many of them related indirectly to the subject of my book. But in my little corner of the world, this is still noteworthy. I’m going to have more to say about patience and persistence in future posts, but for now, I’ll just state that, like most books, this one has been in the works for a while. As Sherwood Anderson wrote in his story, “Death in the Woods,” . The notes had to be picked up slowly one at a time. Something had to be understood….
That’s how I feel about about writing in general. More often than not, the notes have to be picked up slowly.
For anyone thinking, Oh yay, Trauma! Erasure! Definitely a great beach read, let me just say that my world view has always leaned towards absurdity. “I yam who I yam,” to quote Popeye, and so I find these absurdities funny, more often than not. Some funny in an unfunny way (Read, ironic), some funny in a way that will hopefully make you laugh. Individually, the essays in this collection have been published in such places as The New York Times, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Paris Review Daily, Lapham’s Quarterly, and other fine venues.
I also wanted to share that I’m a featured speaker in early November at the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. https://sewibookfest.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/61963-91-Book-Festival-Flyer-2023_V6.pdf I’ll be speaking on “The Hopefulness of the Long-Distance Writer.” A lot of us, when we were younger kept our Nobel acceptance speeches (metaphorically speaking) in our back pockets when we were just starting out. My own speech has stayed firmly tucked away all those years. My talk will be a survival guide of sorts and I’ll share it with you afterwards.
Thanks, Linda Joy! FYI, I sent you an email yesterday. Just want to make sure you received it.
Mazel tov, Robins’