A year of First Love (including the funniest negative reviews)
plus the return of the Essay Collection Incubator!
Applications are open for the next session of my Essay Collection Incubator! Participants will get three rounds of feedback (on 90 pages total); class visits from esteemed authors, agents, and editors; and craft assignments designed for the particular challenges of an essay collection—like balancing the integrity of individual essays with the cohesion of the larger whole, structuring overlapping chronologies, and repetition without redundancy. Class meets via Zoom the first and third Saturdays of the month, July 19-December 6. Applications due June 4!
Also, First Love came out one year ago today! Thank you so much to everyone who has bought, borrowed, read, shared, and reviewed this book of love stories.
(And if you’ve been meaning to grab a copy but haven’t yet… might I suggest that today would be a great day to do so?)
In honor of the first year of First Love, here are a few of my favorite things that have happened since the book came out last May:
First Love has been taught in several creative nonfiction/essay writing classes, and a class on true crime ethics. Having my work taught is one of those things that always makes me pause and really feel the fact that I’m living the life I dreamed of back when I was chipping away at my first manuscript.
Several people have told me they gave First Love as a gift to their best friends, which truly feels like this book’s highest purpose.
One of these people who gave First Love as a gift to her best friend told me that the friend’s two young daughters saw the book sitting out and loved the cover so much that they staged their own First Love-inspired photo shoot on their apartment’s fire escape(!!!). I’m not going to share photos of someone else’s kids here, but I have seen them and they are so cool. Here’s to girls hanging out on fire escapes forever.
A trio of friends “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”ed a copy of First Love, passing it around and writing notes to each other in the margins. I think this might be the highest honor a book can receive? Like higher than the Nobel?
And a few of the nicest things readers have said in reviews:
“never before have I read anything that speaks to the intensity of my young female relationships like this beautiful book does”
“This book of essays is absolutely phenomenal in the way that it explores the intricacies of female friendship, grief, life, love, identity, and where they all intersect.”
“I recommend this book for its depth, its honesty, and the sensitive way the author handles the deep tragedy involved.”
“As someone who’s found herself through the eyes of other women, this collection resonated through my bones.”
“Lilly's essays had me crying about her losses and crying about her incredible friendships and then, when I finished the book, crying that I didn't have more to read.”
…And some of funniest negative things readers have said in reviews:
“a book that made me realize how irritating it must've been to listen to me talk about Anaïs Nin's diaries nonstop in college. apologies to all”
“It’s filled with cigarettes smoke and too much alcohol, skipping school and raunchy bad behaviour.”
“I just found the disclosure of details uncomfortable.”
“Dancyger is young and so there's a bit of stretching needed to make this memoir-in-essays work”
“Boy, I'm glad my friendships are very different from the author's”
Lol! I know authors aren’t supposed to read reviews but I wouldn’t be able to stop myself, so I don’t even try. The vast majority of negative reviews make me chuckle—some of them even sound like compliments (too much raunchy bad behavior??). A few I can’t argue with (like the Anaïs Nin one, and several that said they liked some essays more than others—fair enough). Only a handful really bother me—and even those, only for a few minutes.
If you read and liked the book, will you help me mark First Love’s first birthday by leaving a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads?
It doesn’t have to be long or involved at all, but positive reviews really do help a book keep chugging along for the long haul—which is officially the stage First Love is in now. (Even though I always encourage buying books from local independent bookstores—unfortunately yes, Amazon rankings still matter.)
Also, since several people have asked when the paperback is coming out, this feels like as good a place as any to share that Dial has decided against re-releasing First Love in paperback. That could potentially change someday, but for now, if you’ve been waiting for a paperback version, you might as well go ahead and get yourself a hardcover—or get a copy for a friend!
Is it even bad behavior if it’s not raunchy bad behavior?
"I just found the disclosure of details uncomfortable" -- I thought that was the point of reading/writing. Also, something being Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”ed around is definitely a high honor.