Our upcoming Candlelight Chats (this Sunday and beyond)
Meet Priscilla Gilman, Suleika Jaouad, Chris Guillebeau and Sharon Salzberg!
The Quiet Life is now read (incredibly enough!) in all 193 countries and all 50 American states. Please join us for art, ideas, a kindred vibe, and candlelight chats.
Dear You,
I’ve very excited to announce the extraordinary guests we have planned for our upcoming Sunday Candlelight Chats!
These Chats will all be on Zoom; we’ll send log-in instructions to paid and scholarship subscribers on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning just before each event. Subscribers will also receive replays that you can watch at any time. And - if you’re new here, please know that there is never any pressure to do anything groupy. You can just tune in, watch, and listen.
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Our next Candlelight Chat is THIS SUNDAY, February 11, at 1 pm ET/10 am PT/6 pm UK, featuring my friend, the brilliant author and former literature professor, Priscilla Gilman.
Priscilla writes about literature, family dynamics, and autism, and she’s an advocate for autistic people and children. Her most recent book is The Critic’s Daughter, her intensely moving memoir of her relationship with her loving, complicated father, the literary and theatre critic Richard Gilman. I LOVED THIS BOOK - and the paperback comes out Feb 13 (though you can order it now).
But most of all - Priscilla may be the warmest person you’ll ever meet. I think you’ll love her.
As usual, we’ll start with a candle-lighting ceremony. And, you’ll be able to ask questions of Priscilla and me at various points, in both written and oral form, but you can also just happily listen and watch.
You’ll learn about: Priscilla’s writing; the “lost Eden” nature of her relationship with her father and childhood; the endless love and complication of family relationships; the joys and challenges of memoir-writing; Priscilla’s experience raising an autistic son; the hunger for “the divine, the beautiful, and the sublime”, the wish to cherish rather than “interrogate” literature; and more.
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Next up is
: bestselling author, creativity whisperer, cancer survivor, luminous being. Suleika writes about the lessons she’s learned about living “on fault lines, about holding the unspeakably beautiful and unbearably cruel facts of life in the same palm.” This one will be on Feb. 25 (time TBD). You will not want to miss Suleika - so I’ll send out more details as soon as I have them.
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We are also very lucky to be joined by
: three-time bestselling author, intrepid traveler (he’s visited all 193 countries in the world), founder of the World Domination Summit, and creator of a fascinating new Substack called “A Year in Mental Health.” Date and time to be announced.
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And finally: we are beyond honored to host the one and only Sharon Salzberg!! Sharon is a world-renowned meditation teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She was one of the first people to bring mindfulness & lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture fifty years ago. Her podcast, The Metta Hour, has had 6 million downloads! (And I believe that this chat will also appear as a podcast episode.) Date and time to be announced.
Sharon recently released two new books: Real Life, and Finding Your Way.
I hope you’re as excited about these upcoming sessions as I am.
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or a question here, as usual!
As always,
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING HERE,
❤️ Susan
At some point you might consider a "Chat" with Maria Popova (The Marginalian). The two of you create an intense and deeply reflective and mindful space.
It was in Maria Popova's Marginalian which I have read for years where I first learned of Susan Cain's Bitter-sweet (and later Quiet) after my wife died suddenly. Susan's book had much to do with my getting through it all. In her "Teachings" on my refrigerator door "We transcend grief only when we realize how connected we are with all the other humans who struggle to transcend theirs." I could go on...