Jami

Attenberg

NYT Bestselling Author

Memorist, Fiction & Nonfiction Writer

Travels from: New Orleans, LA

“Attenberg’s writing is sharp and incisive—it’s a pleasure to watch the patterns she created unfold over forty years of these women’s lives.” — Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful

Jami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up, the recently published A Reason to See You Again, and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She has been a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the St. Francis College Literary Prize and longlisted twice for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Kirkus has dubbed her, “the poet laureate of difficult families.”

She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which inspired the USA Today bestseller 1000 Words:A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. The Guardian declared her Craft Talk newsletter one of the “Top 15 Literary Substacks” and she has received coverage for 1000 Words from, amongst others, NPR, New York, Elle and The Today Show, which called the book the “Best Motivational Read for the New Year.” Additionally, 1000 Words is consistently cited in interviews and acknowledgments as a treasured resource for writers at all stages of their career—perhaps the greatest praise of all.

Jami is a widely sought after speaker and has presented workshops and talks across America and around the world. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, The Guardian, and others. Her work has been published in sixteen languages.

A new novel, The Amnesiac, is forthcoming in 2027. She lives in New Orleans, LA.

Jami's Featured Titles

A Reason to See You Again

Ecco |

September 24, 2024

Literary Fiction

From the New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling novel of family, following a troubled mother and her two daughters over forty years through a swiftly changing American landscape as they seek lives they can fully claim as their own.

The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. After the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn.

Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging (and lucrative) world of technology. Her sister, Nancy, gets married at the age of twenty-one to a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami, trying to forget the past even as it haunts her.

But each woman must learn in her own way that running from the past can’t save you—and they must make life-altering decisions about what they want their family to be and what they need for themselves to move forward.

Beginning in the 1970s and spanning forty years, A Reason to See You Again takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another, and the many unexpected forms that love can take.

Family Narratives, Fiction, Friendship & Community, Jewish Themes

1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round

S&S/Simon Element |

January 9, 2024

Creative Writing Composition

National Bestseller

Inspired by Jami Attenberg’s wildly popular literary movement #1000WordsofSummer, this “encouraging handbook” (Publishers Weekly) features essays on creativity, productivity, and writing from acclaimed authors including Roxane Gay, Lauren Groff, Celeste Ng, Meg Wolitzer, and Carmen Maria Machado.

In 2018, novelist Jami Attenberg, faced with a looming deadline, needed writing inspiration. Using a bootcamp model, she and a friend set out to write one thousand words daily for two weeks straight. They opened this practice to Attenberg’s online community and soon hundreds then thousands of people started using the #1000WordsofSummer hashtag to track their work and support one another. What began as a simple challenge between two friends has become a literary movement—write 1,000 words per day without judgement, or bias, or concerns about writer’s block, and see what comes of it.

1000 Words is the book-length extension of this movement. It is about becoming—and staying—motivated, discovering yourself and your creative desires, and approaching your craft from a new direction. It features advice from more than fifty well-known writers, including New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, and stars of the literary world. Framing these letters are words of wisdom and encouragement, plus specific strategies, from Attenberg on how to carve out a creative path for yourself all year round.

Paired with vibrant word art illustrations, 1000 Words is an accessible and motivational craft book that allows you to open any page and get a quick and fulfilling hit of inspiration.

Featuring Roxane Gay, Bryan Washington, Susan Orlean, Maris Kreizman, Sara Novic, Rumaan Alam, Lauren Oyler, Emma Straub, Christopher Gonzales, Benjamin Percy, Mira Jacob, Laura van den Berg, Carmen Maria Machado, Courtney Sullivan, Rebecca Carroll, Ada Limon, R.O. Kwon, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, Elissa Watusha, Alexander Chee, Maggie Shipstead, Deesha Philyaw, Jasmine Guillory, Kristen Arnett, Attica Locke, Megan Abbott, Min Jin Lee, Lauren Groff, Andrew Sean Greer, Camille Dungy, Megan Giddings, Isaac Fitsgerald, Hannah Tinti, Michael H. Weber, Celeste Ng, Elizabeth McCracken, Will Leitch, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Morgan Parker, Kiese Laymon, Melissa Febos, Alissa Nutting, Liz Moore, Laila Lalami, Megan Mayhew Berman, Rebecca Makkai, Meg Wolitzer, Mychal Denzel Smith, Josh Gondelman, and Dantiel W. Moniz.

I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home

Ecco |

January 11, 2022

Memoir

Named a Best Book of the Year by: Time * New Yorker * Sunday Times (UK)

From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling memoir about unlocking and embracing her creativity—and how it saved her life.

In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg—described as a “master of modern fiction” (Entertainment Weekly) and the “poet laureate of difficult families” (Kirkus Reviews)—reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one’s ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it?

As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. Through it all she grapples with questions of mortality, otherworldliness, and what we leave behind.

It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth—the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself.

Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one’s way home—emotionally, artistically, and physically—and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.

Craft of Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Family Narratives, Memoir & Personal Journeys

How to Live A Creative Life

What does it take to live a creative life every day? Jami shares her personal insights, lessons from the #1000wordsofsummer movement, and tools to help you stay inspired and motivated.

Why We Write

What drive us to tell stories? How can we access our fascinations? Whether it’s a personal essay or a novel you’ve longed dreamed of finishing, digging into the “why” of writing can help you accomplish your writing goals.

Exploring Origin Stories

Why do we write about ourselves? This workshop focuses on how to process our personal histories in a safe but expansive way, whether through writing fiction or memoir.

Against AI

Why doing your own creative work is beneficial for you and this world.

“The poet laureate of difficult families.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Master of modern fiction.” — Entertainment Weekly

“One of our finest contemporary storytellers” — Nylon

“Doyen of absorbing family excavations.” — Vanity Fair

“Entertaining and empathetic… Attenberg knows how to imperil her characters and love them at the same time.” — Booklist

“With wry, streamlined wit and almost ruthless efficiency, [Attenberg] distill[s] the essence of her characters . . . Even minor players are so sharply sketched that they feel immediately familiar, and the cultural markers ring true, too, from the crosscurrents of second- and third-wave feminism to the gold-rush opportunism of the early tech boom . . . . From her, I’d take 10 more chapters of unhappily ever after.” — New York Times Book Review

“From Jami Attenberg, doyen of absorbing family excavations, 37 years in the life of the Cohens: a closeted patriarch, his foundering widow, their daughters, poles apart.” — Vanity Fair

“Attenberg knows where to shine a spotlight to reveal characters’ personalities and dynamics . . . . [Her] characters are as loveable as they are maddening, and the combination of choices and luck makes the novel’s events feel as random—and genuine—as real life. . . . [A] masterful dysfunctional family story.” — Shelf Awareness

Jami’s Substack Link

Jami’s Bluesky Link

How to actually sit down and write a book

Honors, Awards & Recognition

2026 Wilma Dykeman Writer-in-Residence at University of North Carolina Asheville
New York Times Bestseller
Finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
Author of The Today Show’s “Best Motivational Read for the New Year.”