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and this is one of the many things I love about Jen.

Jen's whole piece, on Hairpin, is here.

Her final words are a sweet, right challenge:

So read, read Y.A., read adult literature, read blog posts, read magazines, read your box of Cheerios in the morning. Read all you can and want to read, acknowledging the easy and unchallenging and the difficult and complicated, and form your own opinions, trying to add a little room for nuance and understanding and openness in all that you do. That’s the best you can do as a reader, a writer, and a human.

And how honored am I to have Going Over included among works by Markus Zusak, Nina LaCour, Andrew Smith, Cammie McGovern, Laurie Halse Anderson, Sherman Alexie, Aaron Hartzler, E. Lockhart, and Matthew Quick on Jen's "10 Contemporary Y.A. Books That Made Me Think (and That I Loved)."

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Last week my dear friend Jen Doll launched her first book, Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest, to what we might call mega acclaim.

To be precise: CNN, Time Magazine, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Flavorwire, New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire, Vanity Fair, O Magazine, Harper's Bazaar, and Good Housekeeping have all rallied behind this book—naming it one of the most anticipated books of the year, posting interviews, running excerpts. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Fame like this couldn't happen to a nicer or more talented person. Because Jen, who is a trusted writer for all the cool publications like Hairpin and Atlantic Wire and New York Times Book Review and is additionally my go-to Twitter station, is also generous, thoughtful, and capable of walking an entire stretch of my city in elevated shoes without a peep of a complaint, even as I am assigning the wrong names to tall buildings.

Sunday, while I was out walking in my suburban town (where the buildings don't really seem to have names and therefore cannot be permanently misaligned), a note came from Jen (whose book I'd read in galley form and wrote about here) asking if I had received my hard copy of Save the Date. I had. I'd put it on my to-be-taught memoir/essay shelf, I said, but had not thought to look inside. I should look inside, Jen suggested. I should, perhaps, read the acknowledgments.

I went home. I found the book. And there, above, is what I found.

I was slayed.

In only the best possible way.

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And so, in this week of breathtaking kindness, I want to thank some special people for throwing light my way.

Ed Nawotka, for inviting me to give the keynote address at the Publishing Perspectives conference and for subsequently running the talk today on the Publishing Perspectives site.  To all of you have retweeted the talk, thank you.

Jen Doll, for including Small Damages as one of the top 25 book covers here, on the Atlantic Wire, and for making this the year to remember with her New York Times Book Review thoughts about the book last July.

The YALSA folks for naming Small Damages to the BFYA list.

CMRLS Teen Scene for putting Small Damages on the Printz watch.

A.A. Omer, for giving Small Damages this glorious five-star review.

My friends, old and new, for being there.  My agent, Amy Rennert, for her enthusiasm.  And while this has absolutely nothing to do with Small Damages, a huge thanks to the Gotham team for being so wholly supportive of Handling the Truth, a book due out next August.  I will do everything in my power to earn your faith in me.

My father, for buying a copy of Small Damages, and making a go of reading it, even though it's not exactly this history lover's kind of book.

I have been in the book business a very long time.  I will hold onto these gifts, in memory, for the rest of my life.

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Twelve books, twelve years, four genres, and seven publishing houses ago, there was a lovely small New York Times review of a book I'd written called Into the Tangle of Friendship. 

Between that day and this one, I have been buoyed by readers and friends, by an agent and editors, by good-hearted bloggers and students, and of course by family in this strange but essential writing dream.  I have written odd books (a river speaks in one, corporate America is transformed into a Wonderland in another), "small" books, books that might have been more than they were and books that reached more readers than I thought possible.  I have kept writing because I can't help it, because it is, as I have said before, medicinal, because even when I tried to stop, I didn't know how stopping worked.  What does a life look like without story making and sentence crafting, without reaching and metaphor?  I don't know.  I don't want to find out.

Over the past few weeks, extraordinary kindnesses have been shown toward Small Damages, a book that I had worked on for many, many years.  Kindness within Philomel, that big-hearted publishing phenom that has gifted me with the talents and deep hearts of my editor Tamra Tuller (do I love her? yes, I do), Michael Green (president and (also) writer of some of the best emails ever), Jessica Shoffel (publicist extraordinary—unbelievably smart and quick and precise and there), Julia Johnson (who told me once that she has a secret third eye), Jill Santopolo (that uber-bright cutie who forged the original link), a fantastically talented design and editorial team, and an amazingly generous sales team.  Kindness from interviewers like Abby Plesser and Dennis Abrams.  Kindness from magazine editors like Darcy Jacobs of Family Circle and Renee Fountain of Bella and the super nice people of the LA Times.  Kindness from friends and from bloggers, each of whom is so dear to me, so valued.  (In case you are wondering, the spectacular quilted cover of Small Damages above was created by blogger and friend, Wendy Robards of Caribousmom.)

That should be enough, truly, but a few days ago, something else happened.  The phone rang, and it was my agent, Amy Rennert.  Fortunately, I was sitting down, for Amy had called to read me Jen Doll's most amazing review of Small Damages—a review that appears in this weekend's New York Times.

We yearn, as writers, to be understood.  We yearn to be read with an open heart. We can't even believe our good fortune when this happens to us in the pages of the Times.  When we are read and assessed by one as intelligent and thoughtful as Jen Doll.

The Times.

I have always loved the Times.  Today I love Her even more than always and forever.

There are no words.

A final note:  I have been typing this blog post with fumbling fingers, and I'm quite sure that I have erred somewhere up there.  But my fumbling became a trembling when Jillian Canto

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