March 6, 2026

Almost Paradise!

The last movie I saw before the world shut down in 2020 was PONYO at Paradise Theatre and movie theatres (along with EVERYTHING) were one of those parts of community and city life that I missed so much in the months and years that followed, especially listening to doomsayers who droned that we’d never get them back again.

I started writing DEFINITELY THRIVING in 2021 because I wanted to write a book that would make me happy, to find a way out of such a dark and scary time, and that we all gathered last night at Paradise Theatre, the very place I was dreaming of as I was writing, only underlines how we never knew how the story might unfold, that sometimes things work out rather beautifully in the end.

And how particularly beautiful that I got to launch this book in conversation with the NYT-bestselling Marissa Stapley whose novel LUCKY has become an AppleTV series hitting screens this summer starring ACTUAL Annette Bening and Anya Taylor-Joy. (!!)

Thank you to all the beautiful people who filled the room last night!! It was such a joyful celebration and so much fun to revisit BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY on its 25th anniversary. Thank you for booing Daniel Cleaver, as you should, and being a terrifically engaged audience.

Thank you for helping Type Books sell SO MANY BOOKS last night! Thanks to the family and friends who keep showing up for these things. Thanks to people who showed up who didn’t know me at all—what a thing!! Thank you to Emma Rhodes for her calm, reassuring and awesome presence, and all her hard work to make the night happen. Thank you to House of Anansi who’ve shown this book so much support. And thank you to universe for granting us an event that did not require me to carry a sheet cake across town—WOULD RECOMMEND.