Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Amateur Hour
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.kimberlyharrington.me/
CITY:
STATE: VT
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2018060243 |
| HEADING: | Harrington, Kimberly |
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| 100 | 1_ |a Harrington, Kimberly |
| 370 | __ |c U.S. |e Vermont |
| 372 | __ |a Essays |a Blogs |a Motherhood |2 lcsh |
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| 670 | __ |a Harrington, K. Amateur hour, 2018: |b title page (Kimberly Harrington) page 309 (about the author: Kimberly Harrington is a regular contributor to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the co-founder and editor of parenting humor site Razed, and a copywriter and creative director. She lives in Vermont) page 4 of cover (Welcome to essayist Kimberly Harrington’s poetic and funny world) |
PERSONAL
Married Jon Hughes; children: son and daughter.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Essayist and blogger. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, contributor; Razed parenting humor blog, co-founder, editor, and creative director.
WRITINGS
Contributor of essays and articles to various media, including New Yorker, New York Times, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and Medium.
SIDELIGHTS
Essayist and blogger Kimberly Harrington is known for writing about parenting. She cofounded and is editor for Razes, a humorous parenting blog. She has worked as creative director on accounts for high-profile clients such as Nike, Planned Parenthood, and Seventh Generation. Her writings have appeared in New Yorker, New York Times, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and Medium. She hails from South Burlington, Vermont.
In 2018, Harrington published her debut book, Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words, a funny yet honest collection of essays about parenting and adulthood. With hints of a memoir, the book includes Harrington’s musings on her own childhood, the woman she grew into, and her experiences as a mother. She talks of how she decided to continue working sixty-hour weeks while taking care of newborns, her layoff, and then becoming a stay-at-home mom doing freelance writing. She adds inner monologues and humorous opinions on corporate culture, parent-teacher organizations, too much social media, the bravado of the advertising industry, and the emotional roller coaster that is motherhood. She also notes how she is reliant on social media when her husband, Jon Hughes, is averse to it.
In true mommy blog style, she punctuates her chapters with “time-outs,” quizzes, plenty of swear words, and hashtags. A Kirkus Reviews critic praised the book for being bitterly hilarious and “Even if many of her observations and experiences prove more common and less funny than the packaging suggests, her quirky, dissenting energy should resonate with parents.” Writing in Booklist, Alison Spanner commented: “No piece in this collection of short vignettes is much like another. Some are heartfelt and honest,” while others are satirical and take on a fantasy-like quality. Harrington covers serious topics like school shootings and family-leave policy, and humorous things like a job description for mothers, and recording sounds of children to play back when things are too quiet.
People who knew Harrington said that she would never write a parenting book and even encouraged her, “Please don’t write a parenting book.” She countered in an interview with Kristen Ravin on the Kids Vermont website that writing the book was “just this intersection of when I decided to write personal pieces, write humor pieces, and I happen to be in it with parenting … They happen to intersect, so all of my jerky behaviors that I would be inflicting on other things, instead I’m inflicting on parenting.”
In a review calling the book funny, angry, and moving, a contributor to Publishers Weekly admitted that many of the topics covered “are familiar, but Harrington’s approach to them is singular, and readers…will smile, laugh, and maybe even shed a tear.” Critic Rasha Madkour declared in the Associated Press: “If your throat isn’t constricted, heart not cracked by the end of it, you may consider checking if you have a pulse. …If the pitch-perfect book title strikes a chord with you, most of the essays will, too.”
On Vermont Public Radio, Harrington told Jane Lindholm her aim for the book: “Any writer, on some level, wants to do something permanent, that’s going to outlast them,” she says. “I do think [the book] was my space to really be able to have these loving conversations with them, almost. Even if right now those conversations are extremely one-way. But I hope they’ll appreciate those at some point.” Harrington also writes about how one’s own identity can both conflict with and get caught up in the parenting process. She discusses balancing work and family, such as client dinners versus missing a child’s first accomplishment, and being unable to string thoughts together and having them stay that way while dealing with teething and ear aches.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2018, Alison Spanner, review of Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words, p. 14.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2018, review of Amateur Hour.
Publishers Weekly, March 5, 2018, review of Amateur Hour, p. 67.
ONLINE
Associated Press, https://www.apnews.com/ (May 11, 2018), Rasha Madkour, review of Amateur Hour.
Kids Vermont, https://www.kidsvt.com/ (August 1, 2018), Kristen Ravin, author interview.
Vermont Public Radio, http://digital.vpr.net/ (May 3, 2018), Jane Lindholm, review of Amateur Hour.
About
Kimberly Harrington is a regular contributor to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the co-founder and editor of parenting humor site RAZED, and a copywriter and creative director. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and on Medium. Her first book AMATEUR HOUR: MOTHERHOOD IN ESSAYS AND SWEAR WORDS is now out from Harper Perennial. She lives in Vermont on purpose.
Photo: Isaac Wasuck
Photo: Isaac Wasuck
https://www.kimberlyharrington.me/about
Me
Kimberly Harrington
Kimberly Harrington is a copywriter and creative director, a regular contributor to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Cut. She is the author of AMATEUR HOUR: MOTHERHOOD IN ESSAYS AND SWEAR WORDS and the co-founder and editor of parenting humor site RAZED. Please invite her to a party, she has dresses.
WHAT I DO
Concepting
Copywriting
Humor writing
Writing writing
Editorial-ish things
Voice-y stuff
Creative direction
Naming
Taglines
Brand building
Brand strategy
Brand books
Brand brand brand
Truth telling
Heartstrings pulling
Wise apple-ing
WHO I DO IT WITH
Humor & Heart: An Interview With Essayist Kimberly Harrington
BY KRISTEN RAVIN
When Kimberly Harrington walks into Burlington's Citizen Cider for a chat with Kids VT — sporting red lipstick, a stylish shag haircut and a gray motorcycle jacket draped over her shoulders — she looks more like the front woman of an indie band than the writer of essays about motherhood.
Harrington is a rock star in her own right. The South Burlington mother of two is a copywriter and creative director who's worked for high-profile clients such as Nike, Planned Parenthood and Seventh Generation. She recently added author to her résumé with the May 1 release of her first book, Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words, published by Harper Perennial.
About three years ago, after more than two decades of working in advertising and design, including six years at Burlington's JDK Design (now Solidarity of Unbridled Labour), Harrington rediscovered her childhood love of writing. She began posting personal pieces about the nitty-gritty realities of motherhood on the online platform Medium and getting her work published by humor site McSweeney's Internet Tendency. "Once I started writing, then I felt like I had a whole lifetime of ideas," she said.
Harrington's frank, offbeat style struck a chord with readers: Her 2016 piece "Please Don't Get Murdered at School Today" — a dark, satirical response to school shootings written from the point of view of a parent talking to her child — has been shared more than 327,000 times on Facebook. In 2015, she cofounded the parenting humor site RAZED with longtime friend Eric Olsen.
Now, Harrington, who is raising an 11-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son with her husband, Jon Hughes, is putting both reworked and brand-new personal essays and conceptual humor pieces into print in her first book. Some are heart-wrenching meditations on topics such as family-leave policy and the passage of time, and others are just plain funny — like a selection entitled "Job Description for the Dumbest Job Ever." (The job title? Mother.)
Harrington recently spoke with Kids VT about her work.
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KIDS VT: You're the cofounder and editor of the parenting humor site RAZED, and now you've written a book about your experiences as a mom, but I wouldn't call you a mommy blogger. How do you describe what you do?
KIMBERLY HARRINGTON: When this book was first announced, [the fact] that it was under "parenting" was laugh-out-loud funny, and not because it's theoretically a humor book. Anyone who knows me, anyone who has been around me and my children, would not be like, "She should probably write a parenting book." It might be like, "She should definitely be a person who doesn't write a parenting book. Please don't write a parenting book." I think it ends up being that it's just this intersection of when I decided to write personal pieces, write humor pieces, and I happen to be in it with parenting ... They happen to intersect, so all of my jerky behaviors that I would be inflicting on other things, instead I'm inflicting on parenting.
KVT: In your essay "I Am the One Woman Who Has It All," you write that in your family, you have breadwinner status and lead parent status. Asking as the working mother of a toddler, I wonder how you sustain those roles over time without burning out?
KH: When my kids were little and I was working full time, I was not even keeping my head above water, honestly. Being freelance was a complete game changer for everything. My husband is really, really involved. So even when I was full time — he works for a great company, Catamount North Construction — they gave him Fridays off until both of my kids were in kindergarten. They've always been really flexible, and they've let him be really flexible, which is huge. But once I was freelance, that was like "game changer" because, first of all, I have more time, I'm physically at home, but I can also be there for the school stuff, be the one who's taking them to appointments.
KVT: When writing the book, how did you decide how much to share about your kids? Did you run things by them?
KH: I didn't run anything by them. So I'm sure that won't backfire ... The whole reason the book was bought is that it's through this thread of motherhood, so I have to write about them, but I'm very protective of them ... The feedback that I got [from early readers] was that there were a couple pieces that ... were just so specific to my kids. And those actually contained much more intimate, personal reflections — both from me and toward my kids. When I made the decision to pull those, I realized I felt really relieved by it.
KVT: This isn't a typical parenting book, but it's about your experiences as a parent. Was there anything you tried to steer away from in writing it?
KH: One thing that I think is very telling is that some of the pieces that read like advice are my least favorite pieces ... I stand by the points of view in them, but I think I personally don't feel comfortable — as anyone who's been around me and my children knows — giving advice.
KVT: What do you see as the benefits of raising kids in Vermont?
KH: I think the fact that they have so much access to so much natural beauty. We're not big outdoors people — I'm not even going to pretend we are — but the fact that [we have] Shelburne Farms, the lake, things that are right there. Every time we go for a walk at Shelburne Farms or grab some snacks and go down to the lake and hang out there all day, it's like, "This is just ridiculous that we can do this." And it's not that hard; it's not the slog you have in the city ... It's certainly a bit of a bubble, for sure. I think it's delightful when we travel with them where it's really obvious how much of a bubble they are being raised in. We went to Florida, like, three years ago. We went out to dinner at the worst pizza place I've ever been to in my life. They used a hot-dog warmer or something to warm up frozen pizza. It was grim. My daughter was like, "So is this wood-fired pizza, or...?" I was like, "Whatever the opposite is of wood-fired pizza, that's what we're getting for dinner." It was adorable.
Harrington, Kimberly: AMATEUR HOUR
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Harrington, Kimberly AMATEUR HOUR Perennial/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $15.99 5, 1 ISBN: 978-0-06-283874-2
The modern motherhood memoir in a series of sardonic spoofs.
Creative director and humor writer Harrington reversed the typical American experience of childbearing, working 60-hour weeks while taking care of her newborn children before staying home with them a few years later, when a layoff forced her into freelance work. Using plenty of swear words, as advertised, she chronicles her years on both sides of the mommy wars, tallying the insults of an unenlightened corporate culture and the exquisite tortures of working from home with kids. The narrative features blog-style recollections punctuated with "time-outs": conceptual interludes featuring hashtags, listicles, pretend dialogues, and quizzes ("Radiohead Song or Accurate Description of My Parenting?"). The least successful of these experiments are still clever, and though her comedic timing often fizzles, the frenzy of styles and self-conscious gimmicks keeps things lively and justifies her career as a professional thrower of ideas at walls. Harrington embraces the bravado and casual irreverence of the advertising industry even as she mocks it, and she never tires of portraying herself as an ill-fitting matriarch, a Don Draper who awoke one day to find himself leading a Girl Scout troop. The author is at her wittiest when transforming her outrage--especially at the sorry plight of mothers in the United States and their "cultural irrelevance" after maternity leave--into absurd, acerbic commentary. Like all effective satire, Harrington's best bits arise from deep anger, and she reminds readers that, more than meal trains or forced holidays, mothers desperately need policy reform. Too often, her essays switch unexpectedly into truisms and parenting advice for soul-weary breeders, saccharine (if sincere) messages of encouragement that do not pair well with a plateful of sarcasm. Even if many of her observations and experiences prove more common and less funny than the packaging suggests, her quirky, dissenting energy should resonate with parents who find little use for the usual
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mommy-blogger fare. Bitterly hilarious in spots.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Harrington, Kimberly: AMATEUR HOUR." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. Book Review Index
Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650697/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=86f93c02. Accessed 13 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650697
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Amateur Hour: Motherhood in
Essays and Swear Words
Alison Spanner
Booklist.
114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p14. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words.
By Kimberly Harrington.
May 2018. 320p. HarperPerennial, paper, $15.99 (9780062838742). 817.
Selling this book as a book about motherhood would sell it short. It is not about any one thing. Rather, it is a meditation on a full, beautiful, and messy life. In her first book, Harrington, a contributor to the New Yorker and McSweeney's, writes about being a woman in her twenties, thirties, and forties; about being a working woman, wife, and mother; about being a person who struggles daily with anxiety and worry for her future, her death, her children's safety, and her marriage. No piece in this collection of short vignettes is much like another. Some are heartfelt and honest (describing what it's like to wash the body of a family member who has died or to have regrets about raising children in the social-media age), while others take on a satirical, fantasy-like quality (imagining a pilot berating, over the in-flight intercom, a mother for her personal failings). Chapters will make readers rotate through laughter, tears, and cringing, and are all written with refreshingly honest and bold abandon.--Alison Spanner
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Spanner, Alison. "Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words." Booklist, 15 Apr.
2018, p. 14. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268014 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=c097ab85. Accessed 13 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537268014
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Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words
Publishers Weekly.
265.10 (Mar. 5, 2018): p67. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words Kimberly Harrington. Harper Perennial, $15.99
trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-283874-2
This funny, angry, and moving essay collection from Harrington, a copywriter and regular contributor to McSweeney's Internet Tendency, considers life for women dealing with motherhood, work, marriage, self-image, expectations, ambition, fatigue, and everything else. "Our culture has set the bar so high that it's hidden in a place where we'll never find it," she writes. Per the subtitle, the writing is often profane, but just as often poignant, as in Harrington's opening salvo, addressed to her children and titled, "I Don't Want to Be Dying to Tell You These Things," which states "you will be disappointed to learn that parents, and adults in general, do not have all the answers." Full of "righteous anger" about how quickly new mothers are expected to leap back into fulltime work, nostalgia for the "nowhere-but-here" days spent with toddlers, and grief for lost loved ones, Harrington is at her best in the most personal pieces, including discussions of working from home ("The Super Bowl of Interruptions") and of trying to parent without overpraising children ("Your Participation Trophies Are Bullshit"). The collection also has short throwaways ("Your Cute Wedding Hashtags 20 Years Later") and clever humor pieces, such as an essay presenting motherhood as a job description. All of the topics covered are familiar, but Harrington's approach to them is singular, and readers--particularly those who have been in the motherhood trenches--will smile, laugh, and maybe even shed a tear. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
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"Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words." Publishers Weekly, 5 Mar. 2018, p. 67. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530430331 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6ea67340. Accessed 13 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530430331
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New book offers hilarious and poignant take on motherhood
“Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words” (Harper Perennial), by Kimberly Harrington
Motherhood is nothing if not a roller coaster of emotions, and a new book on the topic captures the wild ride perfectly.
“Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words” by Kimberly Harrington careens from the hilarious to the poignant, eliciting nods of recognition, fists of outrage and many moments of bemusement and reflection.
Harrington, a regular contributor to the humor site McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, writes movingly about the grief of miscarriage and the gift of doting grandparents. She writes passionately about the sanctity of parental leave and the inhumanity of work intruding on the foundational early months of a family. She writes hysterically and authentically about what wedding vows would sound like if we wrote them based on actual experience.
Her essay outlining the job description for “Mother” starts with a fitting summary: “This position manages to be of the utmost importance and yet somehow also the least visible and/or respected in the entire organization. You will enjoy a whole bunch of superficial attention and lip service from culture, advertisers, and politicians but will never receive a credible follow-up in the form of a concrete plan for advancement, support, benefits, or retirement. Please note: although you will coordinate, plan, and do almost everything, you should expect to crash face-first into bed every night feeling like you’ve accomplished basically nothing. Welcome!”
She brings perspective to the dispute among — and within — mothers who work outside the home and those who stay home with their children. “Yes, working mom, you have missed a first. ... But along the way you have probably dodged a bullet or two or a half dozen on the colic or the crankiness, the teething or earache front.”
“Yes, stay-at-home mom,” she writes, “you have missed stringing your thoughts together and having them stay that way without someone tugging at your shirt or your hand. ... But you have also missed the mind-numbing tasks, the manufactured chaos, and the never-ending client dinners that have taken you away from your family.”
In Harrington’s final essay, she imagines having deposited childhood sounds in a bank, to later play when “everything is too quiet.”
“I would withdraw you calling me ‘mama’ because it’s already been years since you’ve called me that, and I would withdraw every single time you unabashedly whispered to me that you love me, love me, will love me forever and will live with me always.”
If your throat isn’t constricted, heart not cracked by the end of it, you may consider checking if you have a pulse.
Not all of the essays land, as is to be expected with any collection of writings, but if the pitch-perfect book title strikes a chord with you, most of the essays will, too. It’s a balm knowing you’re not the only one on the roller coaster.
Tuesday, May 8, 6:30 p.m.
Vermont author Kimberly Harrington will read from, discuss and sign her new book, Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words, a humorous and honest exploration of the highs and lows of being a parent (or just being human) in a world marked by contradictions, pressures, hypocrisy, social media, and loveable, if loud, children.
Essay titles like “Kids, It’s Time You Knew the Truth. Your Mother is a Real Piece of Work,” “Your Participation Trophies are Bullshit,” “Fifty-One Things You Should Never Say to a Mother Ever,” and “If You Love Your Grandparents, Go Visit Them,” Harrington gets to the heart of the daily dilemma that is parenthood. “Do I have to be dying to tell you I did my damnedest to figure this thing out, this being-a-mother thing, this being-a-parent thing, this working thing, this being-human thing?” Harrington writes in the open letter to her kids, “I Don’t Want to be Dying in Order to Tell You These Things.” “I’ve tried to be better but have oftentimes only been worse. I’ve expected more of you than I certainly expect of myself, to be kind, to not gossip, to be inclusive, to not swear or fight. I love fighting.” As she navigates the imperfect voyage of motherhood, Harrington is ever open about the envy parents feel, the mistakes they make, the everyday terror they hide. “You will be disappointed to learn that parents, and adults in general, do not have all the answers,” she confesses to her children. “That for every inconsistency and misstep, unpaid allowance and cancelled vacation, we prove ourselves to be the amateurs we’ve always known ourselves to be. We are as uncertain as you are, but we can’t let you know that.”
Kimberly Harrington is a regular contributor to McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the co-founder and editor of parenting humor site RAZED, and a copywriter and creative director. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and on Medium. She lives in Vermont on purpose.
Event date:
Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - 6:30pm
'I Want You Laughing Or I Want You Crying.' Kimberly Harrington's Book Of Essays About Motherhood
By JANE LINDHOLM • MAY 3, 2018
Towards the beginning of her new book of essays, Vermont author Kimberly Harrington includes a short satirical piece titled "Just What I Wanted, a Whole Twenty-Four Hours of Recognition Once a Year." It's a good read for this time of year, as we approach the beloved/dreaded holiday known as Mother's Day. (It's Sunday, May 13, in case you were wondering.)
In the essay, Harrington quips, "What day is Mother's Day again? A Sunday? You mean a day everyone else has off anyway? Of course. Perfect." And she notes other things that get a day of national recognition: bobbleheads, cellophane tape, beer-can appreciation and personal-trainer awareness, to name a few. Kind of puts motherhood in perspective.
"What day is Mother's Day again? A Sunday? You mean a day everyone else has off anyway? Of course. Perfect." — Kimberly Harrington
CREDIT HARPER PERENNIAL
Harrington's snarky asides in her new memoir Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words come in groups, contained in their own chapters called Time Outs. Her humor is biting, cynical and laugh-0ut-loud funny. And those who know her writing from McSweeney's Internet Tendency or the New Yorker will find themselves in familiar territory. But these fictional lists and "bonkers conceptual pieces," as she puts it, are in stark contrast to how vulnerable and open she is about her experience of motherhood in other chapters.
Harrington begins the book with a note to her children, 13-year-old Walker and 11-year-old Hawthorne. "Thank you for going away so I could write about how much I love you," the dedication reads. Harrington, who also works as a copywriter and creative director, had seven weeks to write the book last summer.
"I was constantly avoiding them and making them avoid me," she told Vermont Edition, "and then crying about them with my laptop in front of me all summer!" And the book reads, in many ways, as a love letter to them.
"Any writer, on some level, wants to do something permanent, that's going to outlast them," she says. "I do think [the book] was my space to really be able to have these loving conversations with them, almost. Even if right now those conversations are extremely one-way. But I hope they'll appreciate those at some point."
Many of Harrington's personal essays in Amateur Hour are reflections on her own life, stretching back to her years before marriage and children. She writes about the pressure of work and family, and of how one's own personal identity can both conflict with and get wrapped up in the parenting process. In Harrington's case, she wonders about her desire for "likes" and "hearts" on social media and contrasts that with her husband's complete aversion to social media.
By way of example, she reveals in one essay that the first time she texted her husband the thumbs up emoji he wrote back "that's not nice" because he thought she was saying "up yours."
When it comes to her kids, Harrington says the desire to share their adorable moments has come into conflict with their emerging autonomous identities. But that doesn't mean she gave them veto power over what she wrote in the book.
"Nope. I sure did not," she laughs. In fact, they haven't yet read the book. Walker, her older son, has little interest in the book. But her daughter, Hawthorne, has wanted to read every page from the moment she knew the book existed. Harrington says there are some essays she hopes they'll never read, things "they can't unsee once they've read them." She's considering taking the advice of a friend to cut pages out of the book with a box cutter and give essays to Hawthorne over time, as she's ready.
"It's sounds really tantalizing when you're not allowed to read something," she's tried to explain to her daughter, but "the vast majority of the stuff in here, certainly from a humor standpoint, is old lady humor. It's parenthood and it's marriage and it's just stuff that is not going to have her bringing it to middle school and being like, 'Hey, guys, look what my mom wrote; it's amazing!'"
Nonetheless, Harrington is pleased with the book, and what she has produced captures a moment in time, encapsulating the craziness of marriage and parenthood and being a working mother in 2018.
"I feel comfortable with everything that's in here," she says. "I've really had time to examine it. I think it would be a very different book if I wrote it when they were younger. And I think it would be a very different book if I wrote it three years from now. I find it really fascinating in terms of my changing relationship with them."
Listen to the full interview above for more with Kimberly Harrington.
Broadcast on Thursday, May 3, 2018 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.