Jami Attenberg

“Jami Attenberg is undoubtedly a writer’s writer and a phenomenal talent. There is so much beauty in her craft; a tenderness present even on the sentence level. A compelling literary treasure, Attenberg is a real wonder.” —Kristen Arnett

“Prickly and unsentimental, but never quite hopeless, Attenberg. the poet laureate of difficult families, captures the relentlessly lonely beauty of being alive.” —Kirkus, starred review

“Dazzling.” —Publisher’s Weekly

Jami Attenberg is the author of eight books of fiction, including: A Reason To See You Again, Instant Love, The Kept Man, The Melting Season, The Middlesteins, Saint Mazie, and All Grown Up. Her most recent novel is All This Could Be Yours (2019), which was included on the Best of Fall lists from People, Vogue, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, New York, Observer, Bust, Nylon, New York Post, Pop Sugar, and more. She is also the author of 1000 Words: Stay Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Long, an inspirational book based on her grassroots literary movement, “1000 Words of Summer.” The book includes thoughts on the creative lifecycle and the craft and art of writing, as well as original letters of advice and support from dozens of authors.

Attenberg’s memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home (2022), a brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation. Attenberg—described as a “master of modern fiction” by Entertainment Weekly and the “poet laureate of difficult families” by Kirkus Reviews—reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one’s ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it? Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one’s way home—emotionally, artistically, and physically—and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.

About All This Could Be Yours, Emma Cline, author of The Girls, says, “Jami Attenberg’s work is so deeply attuned to humans and our imperfect attempts to love each other. All This Could Be Yours is populated by Attenberg’s pitch-perfect characters; flawed, recognizable people dealing with big topics–death, family, sex, love–and Attenberg handles it all with an expert touch and a keen sense of what, despite all the sadness and secrets, keeps people connected, striving for moments of beauty and tenderness in a dark world.”

Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships and urban life for The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, Slate, and others. Her work has been published in a total of sixteen languages.

She lives in New Orleans, LA.

Short Bio

Jami Attenberg is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, the memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You, and, most recently, the USA Today bestselling writing guide 1000 WORDS. She is also the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. In September, a new novel, A Reason to See You Again, will be released. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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A Reason to See You Again

Novel, 2024

The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. Triggered by the death of Rudy Cohen, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn.

Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging (and lucrative) world of technology. There she enters into a fraught and dramatic relationship with her womanizing boss and a roller coaster of a friendship with her (mostly beloved) coworker Margaret. Her sister, Nancy, marries young, to a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami, trying to forget the past even as it haunts her.

But they each learn in different ways that running from the past can’t save you—and then must make life-altering decisions about what they want their family to be and what they need to move forward.

Beginning in the 1970s and spanning forty years, A Reason to See You Again takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, and the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another. Perhaps more than anything, this is a novel about women claiming their agency in uncertain times. With her inimitable verve and compassion, Jami Attenberg, “the poet laureate of difficult families” (Kirkus Reviews), tells a story of the bonds and scars that come from less-than-perfect families—and the many unexpected forms that love can take.

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1000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round

Essay, 2024

Inspired by Jami Attenberg’s wildly popular literary movement #1000WordsofSummer, this collection features encouraging letters on creativity, productivity, and writing from acclaimed authors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Meg Wolitzer, and Carmen Maria Machado.

In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgment, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it.

1000 Words is the book-length extension of this movement. It is about becoming—and staying—motivated, discovering yourself and your creative desires, and approaching your craft from a new direction. It features advice from more than fifty well-known writers, including New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and stars of the literary world. Framing these letters are words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, from Attenberg on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round.

Paired with vibrant word art illustrations, 1000 Words is an accessible and motivational craft book that allows you to open any page and get a quick and fulfilling hit of inspiration.

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I Came All This Way To Meet You

Memoir, 2022

From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling memoir about unlocking and embracing her creativity—and how it saved her life.

In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg—described as a “master of modern fiction” (Entertainment Weekly) and the “poet laureate of difficult families” (Kirkus Reviews)—reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one’s ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it?

As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. Through it all she grapples with questions of mortality, otherworldliness, and what we leave behind.

It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth—the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself.

Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one’s way home—emotionally, artistically, and physically—and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.

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All This Could Be Yours

Fiction, 2019

From critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a novel of family secrets: think the drama of Big Little Lies set in the heat of a New Orleans summer.

“If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,” says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father, Victor, is on his deathbed, Alex—a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister—feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tight-lipped mother, Barbra.

As Barbra fends off Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex’s brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drugstores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As family members grapple with Victor’s history, they must figure out a way to move forward—with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children.

All This Could Be Yours is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power; it shows how those webs can entangle a family for generations, and what it takes to—maybe, hopefully—break free. With her signature “sparkling prose” (Marie Claire) and incisive wit, Jami Attenberg deftly explores one of the most important subjects of our age.

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The Middlesteins

Fiction, 2012

For more than 30 years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie’s enormous girth. She’s obsessed with food – thinking about it, eating it – and if she doesn’t stop, she won’t have much longer to live.

When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving Edie. Benny, an easy-going, pot-smoking family man, just wants to smooth things over. And Rachelle – a whippet thin perfectionist – is intent on saving her mother-in-law’s life, but this task proves even bigger than planning her twin children’s spectacular b’nai mitzvah party. Through it all, they wonder: do Edie’s devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone? Or are others at fault, too?

With pitch-perfect prose, huge compassion, and sly humor, Jami Attenberg has given us an epic story of marriage, family, and obsession. The Middlesteins explores the hopes and heartbreaks of new and old love, the yearnings of Midwestern America, and our devastating, fascinating preoccupation with food.

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Instant Love

Fiction, 2007

But we don’t give up. We keep trying. We’re either too stupid to learn from our mistakes or we honestly believe that the next time will be different; it’s hard to say which. Driven by the mad hopefulness that is part of the human condition, we are constantly falling in and out of love with a slightly different version of the person who came before. Jami Attenberg chronicles those exact moments with heartbreaking realism in her powerful debut, Instant Love.

Told through the eyes of three young women and their friends and lovers, Instant Love explores what it means to be in love, what it means to be lonely, and what it means to be both at the same time. Holly turns to computer dating to find love even as she thinks wistfully of a former boyfriend who loved her well and fed her ice cream. Maggie recounts the story of her one crazy summer to her disbelieving husband and feels the distance between them grow wider than the void across their king-sized bed. And Sarah Lee remembers the one who got away and the one she ran away from, all the while moving toward the one she can actually love.

As Holly, Maggie, and Sarah Lee move through the rituals of modern love, they have to decide who is worth taking a chance on in a world where things don’t fall into place easily, people are often difficult, and disappointment is the rule. Through their stories, Attenberg presents a rare, honest look at love.

Read What’s In Print

• When Williamsburg Was On The Wrong Side Of The River by Jami Attenberg – The New Yorker

• Review of I Came All This Way To Meet You by Jami Attenberg – Kirkus Reviews

• The Meaning of an Examined Life in Jami Attenberg’s Memoir – Chicago Review of Books

• Jami Attenberg and Bernardine Evaristo on chronicling the grit behind their glamorous careers – Entertainment Weekly

• Jami Attenberg’s Memoir Is a Portrait of the Artist as a Born Writer – New York Times

• “I’m Gonna Die if I Have to Write Another One of These.” Why Jami Attenberg Switched to Memoir – LitHub

• In All This Could Be Yours, A Day In The Death Of A Toxic Narcissist – NPR

• Review: As a Father Lies Dying, His Family Reckons With Their Troubled Legacy – New York Times

• Where I’ve Laid My Head by Jami Attenberg – The Rumpus

• The Hit Writer: Jami Attenberg Interviewed by Elena Sheppard – The Rumpus

• Jami Attenberg: ‘We tend to blame our parents for too long’ – The Guardian