It's all happening!
One week out from THE SUN WON'T COME OUT TOMORROW: events and accolades!
My book The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow comes out a week from today, and as Penny Lane says in Almost Famous, it’s all happening! I’m spending the coming days trying not to lose my mind, celebrating with friends, and preparing for book events.
Speaking of which:
On Tuesday, January 21, the day the book launches, I’ll be at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania here in Philly at 6:00 PM. I’ll do a little reading and then have a conversation with Jamie-Lee Josselyn, who was my boss at the Writers House when we were both essentially children, so this one is going to be very special for me. More info here, and RSVP here.
Then I’ll shoot down to Politics and Prose in D.C. on Wednesday, January 22 at 7:00 PM for an event with Lily Meyer, a novelist, translator, and critic and fellow member of the Freelance Solidarity Project. More info here.
On Thursday, January 22 I will be back in Philly for an event at the Barnes & Noble at 6:00 PM. I’ll be in conversation with Emma Copley Eisenberg, patron saint of the Philly lit scene and founder of Blue Stoop, where I teach. More info and RSVP here.
And finally, the following week, on Wednesday, January 29, I’ll be back to my former stomping ground of Brooklyn for an event at Greenlight Bookstore at 7:30 PM with my Columbia MFA professor Leslie Jamison. Greenlight is one of my very favorite bookstores and their former Flatbush location was my local indie for years. More info and RSVP here.
Here’s all of that info in handy graphic form:
As a book critic, I’m all too aware of the issues with lists, and how arbitrary they can feel. But my book made two most-anticipated lists recently that felt quite meaningful to me—LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 and Traci Thomas’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025.
I wrote quite a bit for LitHub from 2016 to 2019—it was where I first wrote review essays and other forms of criticism—so it was a real full-circle moment to see my book on their list. Theirs is also one of the few preview lists I consult as a critic when I’m working on the unwieldy spreadsheet I use to track the books I’m interested in covering, both because it tends to align with my tastes (literary fiction, narrative nonfiction) and because they include a good proportion of titles from small and indie presses that I’m not already getting tons of publicist pitches for.
As for Traci Thomas, she runs The Stacks, an excellent independent literary podcast, and she’s a rare champion of nonfiction on Bookstagram. I trust her taste and think she strikes a great balance between asking probing questions and having She also highlighted The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow on her Substack about January books she’s looking forward to. Thank you Traci!
Finally in bonkers news, Amazon included my book as an Editors’ Pick in Best History Books of January. Complicated feelings about Amazon’s impact on the book industry aside, I’m pleased to see my book (and Colette Shade’s book Y2K!) featured among titles that cover more conventional history fare.
If you’d still like to preorder The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow and want to avoid Amazon, you can get 20% off directly through my publisher if you use this link and code SUN20.
More on the other side of book publication (ack)!
Congratulations, Kristen! Can’t wait to read it.