Today’s GalleyCrush is Kristen Radtke’s Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness, forthcoming from Pantheon on July 6, 2021. Editor’s Note: This book’s publication date has been changed to July 13, 2021.
Perfect pitch: “From the acclaimed author of Imagine Wanting Only This—a timely and moving meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and as a society.”
First line: “When I started writing this book in 2016, rates of loneliness had already been increasing exponentially for decades, yet it wasn’t a subject I heard people talk about very often, at least not in relation to themselves.”
Book buzz: “Seek You stunned me. Kristen Radtke, one of the best of our literary artists, shines her brilliant light into modern America’s experiment in loneliness with this supremely elegant and devastating book. It was my companion during a long, dark night of the soul; I emerged grateful to have had such sleekness and wit, such calm intelligence, to guide me back to daylight.” —Lauren Groff
Book notes: Hardcover, graphic nonfiction, 352 pages.
Cover credit: Kristen Radtke.
Author bio: Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic nonfiction book Imagine Wanting Only This. The recipient of a 2019 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, Radtke is the art director and deputy publisher of the Believer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Marie Claire, the Atlantic, the Guardian, GQ, Vogue, and Oxford American, among other publications.