Welcome to the newsletter home of New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg. You can get signed copies of any of my books via my local bookseller.
This newsletter serves two purposes.
Purpose 1: 1000 Words of Summer
For two weeks a year it is the home of the #1000wordsofsummer project, a 52,000 strong community of writers of all levels who are all supporting each other to write 1000 words a day for two weeks. This project has been in existence since 2018. The next round starts May 30, 2026 and ends June 12, 2026.
It works like this: every day you get a letter from me encouraging you to write. Most days another published author will contribute their thoughts on creativity, productivity, inspiration and more to the letter. You will write 1000 words at home or wherever you write. There is a slack for you to meet other participants and post your daily word count and more. People often track their progress on social media with #1000wordsofsummer. There is a community out there, but also this is very much about doing your own work. Still, we are all each other’s accountability partners: that is the magic of this project.
At the end of it all, you will have a big pile of words and a sense of accomplishment and hopefully the inspiration to keep going.
Here is a FAQ.
Here is an interview about it on NPR’s 1A show.
Here is an article I wrote about it on how it opened up my writing life.
Here is an article about it from the Associated Press.
Here is a podcast interview I did on the history of project.
And now it is a book which you can order a number of places!
Purpose 2: Craft Talk
For the rest of the year, it is a weekly newsletter on writing & publishing & living a creative life, an outgrowth of the #1000wordsofsummer project.
This newsletter was named one of the top 15 literary Substacks by The Guardian! Pretty cool.
A few times a week I will talk about writing sentences and essays and chapters and entire books and editing all of these kinds of things and how to motivate yourself and how to generate ideas and how to get inspired and how to navigate the publishing industry & more. I will ask other authors and creative people about these topics too.
There are subscriber-only discussion threads and archives and regular ask-me-anything chats. This part will not be free. It will be $8 a month or $60 a year.
Here is my big-girl bio:
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 and likes wearing the color yellow.
