Zoe Fishman

she's here

opened my door to find the first real live copy of invisible as air. crying like a baby. this book represents so much to me. look what your ema did, ari and lev. never give up.

 

Thank you, Kate Whitman at Atlanta History Center!

Okay, okay this is my last Invisible As Air post for...a couple days. #sorrynotsorry

 

I apologize for the deluge but as a writer, you wait and wait and wait and stress and wait and then. Finally. Sometimes news and mentions that make you so happy.

 

This is one of those moments. To be praised alongside such esteemed company by the lovely Kate Whitman at the Atlanta History Center is a huge honor.

 

See you at The Decatur Book Festival, Saturday 9/28 at 3 PM!

 

 

 

words in Maplewood, NJ Friday 9/28 @ 7:30 PM: also me! (pls come all of my northeast peoples! xx)

New Jersey, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx: the entire Northeast!

 

I'll be at words in beautiful Maplewood, NJ on Saturday, 9/28 at 7:30 PM, talking about Invisible As Air at words bookstore + signing books.

 

Please come and say hi! I'd be so happy to see you.

 

Writers At The Wrecking Bar 9/24 @ 7:30 PM: ME! (please come ATL, thank you xx)

Atlanta! Come see me and celebrate the publication of my newest novel: Invisible As Air.

Tuesday, September 24th at The Wrecking Bar. 7 PM.

Music, libations, a Q&A + I’ll be signing books hot off the press. Hope to see you and thanks, as ever, for the support!

x

Uphill

Lately I've been having a tough time. I tend to beat myself up when I'm having a tough time because there's so much to be grateful for. I have a book coming out in a little over a month. I have a family and community that sees and helps me. I have two of the most resilient little boys I've ever known to call my own. Every day they inspire me. We have had a true summer for the first time in two years. Beaches and pools and sprinklers and popsicles. Tan lines. I am working on a new book. I am teaching. My mom is doing well.

Ari has embraced second grade and Lev: a new school. A wonderful, free Pre-K program at College Heights. It's just down the street. I am home working by 8:05 AM after five years of driving to and fro for another wonderful school: IJP. It was hard to leave our community there, they have seen us through so much sorrow, but it was time. And an opportunity I could not pass up. 

So on paper I should be frolicking through fields of daisies, a broad smile on my face. I am grateful, truly, but the anxiety and sadness as of late; the feeling that these hot days are endless -it's clouding my view. I'm restless and irritated. I'm nervous about my new book being released into the world. I'm missing Ronen so much that sometimes I can't breathe, and this missing is further compounded by the passage of time since his death. I'm proud of how far we've come, at this tight unit of three that is us, but I am also so sad. That this is how it had to be.

And my dad. I miss his voice. I miss how well he knew me. I miss him with the boys; the way they made him laugh. I miss him with my mom and brother. I miss hearing him tell me when I was screwing up, and I miss hearing him tell me when he was proud of me. The other day I imagined him and Ronen coming home together after a tennis game, the way they would stumble through the door draped in towels and covered in sweat and I had to sit down, right in the middle of the floor and put my head between my legs. I got up a few minutes later. It was time for carpool.

Something I've started to do is bike Lev to school. I am woefully out of shape and there are a lot of hills, but I make it there and back. Sometimes I get off and pull the bike, with Lev in the trailer behind me and I sweat and grunt. But sometimes, I fly down a hill and I think of my youth and Ronen and my dad.

My dad taught me how to ride a bike. He took me and my brother out to the big grassy hill behind the elementary school, dressed in layers of heavy clothing and gave us a big push. Pedal! he would yell at the top as we careened down, inevitably crashing and flying off the first ten or twenty times. But eventually we got it. Bike riding as a kid is one of my favorite memories - feeling so free and young. My dad too would bike to teach sometimes, and once or twice I went along, slogging through the heat and humidity of Mobile summer mornings. I would dutifully ride behind him. There was something about the coolness of that, of exercising as a means of getting to work that I understood even then. No one else's dad did that, but mine did. He wasn't like the other dads. That was cool.

I didn't get back on a bike in the same way until I met Ronen. A friend of mine gave me her old Schwinn and we would criss cross through the streets of Brooklyn in the summer twilight - up to the park to run. Ronen was the most fit person I had ever met - he loved to move and sweat and experience. It was enchanting and sometimes terrifying to ride behind him, especially during his post doctoral year in Chicago when I almost got clipped by a bus, but I always felt safe. And cool. Because what is cooler than exercising as a means of transportation? Not much, I don't think.

So today when I got home, I recognized that I felt better. That my anxiety had abated because in a sense, both of them were with me on that ride - the memories so visceral and happiness-inducing. And I was passing their lesson onto Lev. Will he remember these bike rides in the same way? Ema sweating and grunting; him laughing as we flew downhill past all of the other moms driving?

I hope so.

 

 

Always love being a part of the Decatur Book Festival!

Thrilled to be a part of the always inspiring Decatur Book Festival this Labor Day Weekend.

 

Even more thrilled to sit on a panel with Katherine Center and Patti Callahan Henry discussing, among other things, how we realize and express our characters’ vulnerability as writers.

 

Come see us Saturday, August 31st from 3-3:45 PM at the First Baptist Church Decatur in Carreker Hall.

 

 

It's happening!

So thrilled to announce my book launch courtesy of A Capella Books and the Wrecking Bar.

Drinks, nibbles and an interview by the fabulous Alison Law: Tuesday 9/24 at 7 PM.

Hope to see you. I’m super proud of this one.

xxxx

 

More beautiful blurbage, this time from the wonderful Patti Callahan Henry. More happy tears.

Huge thanks to the incredibly talented and kind Patti Callahan Henry for taking the time out of her very busy schedule to gift me with this happy-making pre-pub blurb about Invisible As Air:

Zoe Fishman’s characters are as vibrant and alive as your dearest friends. Invisible as Air introduces us to a family on the edge of a cliff, teetering over with their grief and need. With psychological acuity, Fishman cracks open the family and takes us to the place where there is beauty in brokenness, where there is light in the dark, and where we can find intimacy in our honesty. I fell in love with each character as they searched for meaning and connection. From the first stunning choice to the last, I could not put this novel down.

- Patti Callahan Henry, USA Today and NYT Bestselling novelist of Becoming Mrs. Lewis.

Invisible As Air's First Blurb. I cried. Happy tears, don't worry.

Writing is such a solitary endeavor, which is a huge part of why I love it so much. Finishing this novel, like my others, was exhilarating and terrifying at once, the latter because now of course people are going to (hopefully) READ it in September when it's published.

 

Yesterday, I received a tremendous gift from a writer and human whose work I admire and respect so much: Joshilyn Jackson. She read the galley and....she liked it! She really liked it! Beyond grateful for her time and enthusiasm. Such a salve for my soul:

 

Zoe Fishman is a gifted writer; her characters are so alive they seem to breathe. INVISIBLE AS AIR poignantly reveals a family on the point of fracture, each looking for escape, each isolated, each desperate to connect. Though it speaks to one of the most difficult issues facing our nation with wisdom and deep grace, this is not an “issue” book. This is a book about people, flawed but striving, broken but hopeful. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.

 

---Joshilyn Jackson, NYT and USA Today bestselling author of NEVER HAVE I EVER

Coming from William Morrow in July, 2019

The Journey

here they are. the very last edits on my new book. and here is my ari, helping me ship them off.

when i started this book, my husband died. and as i was finishing it, my dad died. what a time capsule of grief and pain and yet, still - in this moment - triumph.

my dad used to say: “it’s all about the journey, jack.”

amen. 💜

Edith an Amazon Bestseller 3 x over!

Inheriting Edith was published in October of 2016. And here she is, almost 3 years later an Amazon bestseller three times over.

 

I'm flummoxed, amazed and grateful for the word of mouth that got her here. Thank you all so much!