Here comes BEAR

Book #2! Two weeks away! How!

Dear you,

A mere two years after this newsletter last arrived in your inbox, it’s back. Can you believe it? I hardly can. I hope these past couple years have kept you and yours safe and well; I hope you’re being cared for and able to care for others; I hope you’re thriving. Over on this end, I had a baby last year—that was my household’s big event in 2023—and this year I’m having a book.

Enter Bear. On June 25, a little less than two weeks from now, my second novel will be in the world. It’s about two sisters living on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington. Their island is gorgeous, a tourist destination, but they’re struggling to make ends meet. They dream of the day their lives will change. And then, to their terror and pleasure, their lives do: an enormous bear shows up at their front door.

Writing this book was wild and wonderful and thrilling for me, and I really hope that reading it might be the same way for you. While I was working on it, whenever anyone asked how it was going, I kept saying, “It’s so weird.” What kind of answer is that? But it is weird. It’s part fairy tale, part hyperrealism, part family bond, part medical debt, part intimacy, part mystery, part human, part animal. It burst into my creative life like…well, like a beast at the door. Knock, knock, it said, all furry and strange. Let me in.

And now I’m hoping the beast might visit you. You can preorder the book at your favorite independent bookstore or through any of the links found here. You can also come hang out with me and this wild animal at the spots below. Please come!! (How many exclamation points can I put in this email before the whole thing begins to stink of desperation? It’s just that I have sharp memories of rooms full of empty folding chairs from the last time I was lucky enough to do this thing, ha! So I may well feel a little desperate about it. Please come!!!!!!!)

This novel’s publication is a day I’ve dreamed of for the last five years, since my debut came out in 2019 (sometimes I doubted I’d figure out how to write a book again), and for my whole life, since I first pictured being an author (the fantasy of having books, plural, books! on the shelf). I find fiction writing in general to be a dreamlike experience, one where you drift deep into imagination. It’s private, absorbing, constantly shifting. It’s so…weird. But now, on June 25, the dream comes true. This book is going to be an actual thing we can hold. I’m going to get to be with you in real life.

I can’t wait.

Julia

       🐻       🐻       🐻 

BEAR GOES ON TOUR…

• June 25: Brooklyn, NY: Greenlight Bookstore x St. Joseph’s University with Rumaan Alam

• June 26: Pittsburgh, PA: Riverstone Bookstore with Kit Frick

• June 27: Montclair, NJ: Watchung Booksellers with Boo Trundle

• July 7: Washington, DC: Politics & Prose with Angie Kim

• July 8: Cambridge, MA: Porter Square Books with Rachel Lyon

• July 10: Nashville, TN: Parnassus Books with Ann Patchett

• July 11: St. Louis, MO: Left Bank Books with someone yet to be announced

• July 15: Edina, MN: Barnes & Noble with Curtis Sittenfeld

• July 16: Seattle, WA: Elliott Bay Book Company with Danya Kukafka

• July 17: Beaverton, OR: Powell’s Books with Kimberly King Parsons

• July 18: Corte Madera, CA: Book Passage with someone yet to be announced

• July 23: Dallas, TX: Interabang Books with someone yet to be announced

• July 25: Oxford, MS: Off Square Books with Snowden Wright

…AND MORE! Find all the details and future dates here. Roar, roar, roar!