Some Personal News
Mama got her first book deal!!
I am beyond thrilled to share that I’ve sold a book proposal tentatively titled, HOW TO FIND YOUR PEOPLE: A Guide to the Transformative Power of Community. It will be published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The book will be a prescriptive nonfiction about how to be a part of communities where people care for each other. The book will argue that community is crucial to our mental and physical well-being, and show readers how to participate meaningfully in strong communities within our own neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and religious and civic organizations along with through our family lives. The book will contain unexpected big ideas, compelling stories, and helpful, self-reflective exercises for readers.
In my opinion, there are lots of great, important books out there that outline the huge social consequences of Americans’ lack of connection to one another. There are also lots of books that address the problem of connection through the narrow lens of friendship. My book will focus on community, which are networks of belonging that create generalized reciprocity and aren’t necessarily about 1:1 relationships. I’m especially excited to explore how and why so many Americans have forgotten how to be in a community. And I can’t wait for this book to teach people, concretely, how to reinvest in it.
Part of the ethos of HOW TO FIND YOUR PEOPLE is that community-building isn’t just for personal enrichment. The book will also argue that we cannot tackle the host of social, economic, and political problems our country faces if we are isolated and overwhelmed by our immediate responsibilities. The book will draw on my years of reporting and storytelling experience about forces that shape family life, as well as deep public policy research into how we care for people in America.
My lofty goal for this book is to ignite a public conversation that reimagines solutions for how we currently talk about loneliness and a host of related crises. I want to build a movement of Americans committed to community-filled lives.
Some people might see this as a topic pivot for me, but I actually feel this is the book I’ve been working towards for years. Raising children, caring for one another, and personally grappling with wack-a-mole systemic failures is so much better when we aren’t doing it alone. And tackling problems together is the only way we can make meaningful change.
I am especially grateful to my talented agent, Rachel Sussman, for shepherding me through this proposal and deal process. I am incredibly excited to work with Portfolio editor Bria Sandford, who gets the vision for the book on every level and will be a fantastic partner supporting me in doing my best and most impactful work. The book is tentatively slated for publication in Spring 2027.
Also, I’m so grateful for you, Double Shifters! Some of you have been cheering me on and supporting me since the podcast version of the Double Shift launched in 2019. Thanks for being such a smart, generous, and thoughtful community. I couldn’t do this work without you. I am especially grateful to Double Shift members who workshopped and gave me feedback on some of the ideas in the book proposal in our members-only hangouts.
As I write this book over the next year+, I would love your help. If you see articles about, or have interesting stories from your own life about community-building, please share them with me! More specific asks may come in the future, but just keep this in mind for now.
Also, as I continue my book research and reporting, I’ll be expanding my keynote speaking business. In addition to speaking to corporate and institutional audiences about caregivers at work, I’ll be creating talks around belonging and community building in workplaces. I am beginning to book engagements for 2025. If this might be of interest to a company or organization you are a part of, feel free to reach out at katherine at thedoubleshift dot com.
You will likely see more community-focused subjects in this newsletter starting in the new year, but I’m still planning exactly what that will look like. Watch this space!
As a person who has lived as an expat / immigrant outside the U.S. nearly my entire adult life, I think this book will offer a valuable perspective. The people who succeed at expat life are those who work hard to build community. It’s both eh hardest and easiest thing to do when we are thrust far from our networks. I think looking at expat communities and how they function (both in real life and online) might be very useful for you!
Congrats! I've done this topic a few times on Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship, more recently with the producers/directors of Netflix's Join or Die and with Seth Kaplan, who does tons of work about neighborhoods/community. When the book is out, make sure to reach out to me. I know we can find an angle I haven't covered. While I mainly cover friendship, I discuss community too and I 100% agree with you that they're different. (And both are important.)