1000 Words of Summer 2026 - Day 5

A letter from Nafissa Thompson-Spires.

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Hi friends.

Today you will write 1000 words. Because you are hungrily seeking the kind of joy that can only come with the completion of a good day’s writing work. The deep satisfaction, the self-validation, the feeling of fullness—all those invigorating sensations that comes with writing down all your words. Today we will give ourselves the gift of the fullest expression of ourselves. One thousand words of pleasure. Let’s go.

It’s Day 5. Stay in it, keep your head in it. You’re doing it, I can tell.

I am delighted that today’s contributor is Nafissa Thompson-Spires. I remember how everyone I knew was reading her debut, the hilarious, thought-provoking story collection, Heads of the Colored People, and talking about how great it was. It just had that kind of buzz. And so I took it with me on a trip to Hong Kong, and I still think all the time about how this very American (yet totally universal) book kept me company so far away from home. If we’re lucky, we carry the experience of reading certain books with us forever.

Eventually it was longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and the LA Times Book Prize, and then it won the PEN Open Book Award. Go Nafissa, I thought, because sometimes we cheer people on from afar, and Nafissa was one of those people for me for a long time. And then I got to meet her in person, take a walk with her and sit with her outside in a park in Brooklyn. That was a nice day. I really can’t recommend the book—and Nafissa—enough.

And now, at last, a first novel arrives from her this fall: The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Rich Milford, which I cannot wait to read and which you can pre-order from Books are Magic.

Nafissa has a Substack you can follow. Her donation today goes to the Campaign Against Hunger. Today she tells us some tricks you can play on your brain to keep writing. (Meme inspo courtesy of Nafissa.)