Update: This event is now sold out online. Call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160 to see if there are any extra tickets available in-store.

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Join us for an unforgettable lunch and discussion with bestselling author Mary Laura Philpott! Your $44 ticket includes lunch provided by Alta Strada Restaurant plus a signed copy of I Miss You When I Blink.

Praise for I Miss You When I Blink

"Infinitely relatable. Beautifully written. I'm ready to read it again." — Jenny Lawson, author of Let's Pretend This Never Happened and Furiously Happy

"Mary Laura Philpott is relentlessly funny, self-effacing and charming.” — Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth

"This book is one of my favorites of 2019! I felt that Mary Laura Philpott was writing about me. Can't wait to introduce her to our customers!" — Jane Stiles, Wellesley Books Events Manager

About the Book

Acclaimed essayist and bookseller Mary Laura Philpott presents a charmingly relatable and wise memoir-in-essays about what happened after she checked off all the boxes on her successful life’s to-do list and realized she might need to reinvent the list—and herself.

Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy.

But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options?

In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that?

Like a pep talk from a sister, I Miss You When I Blink is the funny, poignant, and deeply affecting book you’ll want to share with all your friends, as you learn what Philpott has figured out along the way: that multiple things can be true of us at once—and that sometimes doing things wrong is the way to do life right.

About the Author

Mary Laura Philpott writes essays that examine the overlap of the absurd and the profound in everyday life. Her writing has been featured by The New York Times; The Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; McSweeney’s; The Paris Review; O, The Oprah Magazine; and other publications. She’s the founding editor of Musing, the online magazine of Parnassus Books, as well as an Emmy Award–winning cohost of the literary interview show A Word on Words on Nashville Public Television. She also wrote and illustrated the humor book Penguins with People Problems, a quirky look at the embarrassments of being human. Mary Laura lives in Nashville with her family.