Mary Laura Philpott

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.

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In conversation with MARGARET CARDILLO

Margaret Cardillo holds degrees from Boston College and University of Miami. Margaret’s writing for the screen won a College Emmy and received several Best of Fest awards. Her first children’s book, Just Being Audrey, a biography of Audrey Hepburn, won the Florida Book Award Gold Medal with film rights going to Lionsgate. Her second children’s book Just Being Jackie, a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy, was release in 2018 and won the Florida Book Award Silver Medal. Her third children’s book, Dogs At Work, about dogs who have real jobs and, in a twist, have children waiting eagerly at home for them to return from their jobs, will be published in 2021. A former children’s book editor, Margaret now teaches screenwriting at the University of Miami. She lives in Miami with her family and is currently at work on more scripts and books. You can visit her online at www.margaretcardillo.com.

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