Event Details

Join Twin Cities alumni for a lively discussion of When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. We will hold this as a hybrid event with an in-personal social component followed by our book discussion on zoom. Attendees are welcome to log on from Ken’s backyard or elsewhere. 

Please be sure to RSVP and let us know you're planning to attend. This is extremely important in managing our numbers and to enable informed decision-making. Complete address information will be provided upon registration

About the book...
By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, and they know who to avoid. Like the crazy guy on the corner.

But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper:

I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.

The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows things no one should know. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late. - RebeccaSteadbooks.com
 

About the author...

I grew up in New York City, where I was lucky enough to attend the kind of elementary school where a person could sit in a windowsill, or even under a table, and read a book, and no one told you to come out and be serious (well, eventually someone did, but not right away). On those windowsills, under those tables, and in my two beds at night, I fell in love with books. (I had two beds because my parents were divorced.)

Specifically, I fell in love with fiction.

Reading books made me think about writing. (The writer Saul Bellow once said that a writer is a reader moved to emulation. That’s me.)

But I didn’t write a lot. Sometimes I just wrote down things I overheard – jokes, or snatches of conversation. You could probably fit everything I wrote before the age of 17 into one (skinny) notebook.

Much, much later, I became a lawyer (I believed that being a writer was impractical), got married, and started working as a public defender. But I still wrote stories (for adults) when I could find the time.  

My first child, a fabulous son, was born. A few years later, I had another fabulous son. There wasn’t much time for writing stories after that. But I still tried.

One day, my three-year-old son, though fabulous, accidentally pushed my laptop off the dining-room table, and my stories were gone. Poof.

So. It was time to write something new. Something joyful (to cheer me up: I was pretty grouchy about the lost stories). I went to a bookstore (an independent bookstore) and bought an armload of books that I remembered loving as a kid. I read them. I went back to the store and bought more books written for children. I read them. And then I began to write again.

Some people will tell you that real writers don’t use parentheticals (which is nonsense). The most important thing to know about writing is that there are no rules. RebeccaSteadbooks.com