• Photo Sarah Shatz

    About Kim Brooks

    Kim Brooks is the author of Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear, an NPR Best Book of the Year, described by the National Book Review as “an impassioned, smart work of social criticism and a call for support and empathy.”

     

    Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, Salon, Buzzfeed, and other publications. She has spoken as a guest on CBS This Morning, PBS Newshour, 20/20, NPR’s All Things Considered, Good Morning America, the Brian Lehr Show, and many other radio shows and podcasts. Her novel, The Houseguest, was published in 2016. She lives in Chicago. Kim is available for speaking engagements, book club appearances, and one-on-one editorial services and manuscript consultation.

     

    photo Sarah Shatz

     

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    SMALL ANIMALS : Parenthood in the Age of Fear

    Recent Press for Small Animals:

     

    New York Times Book Review

    New York Times Book Review Podcast

    NPR: All Things Considered

    CBS This Morning

    People

    LARB

    The Longest Shortest Time

     

     

    "Small Animals interrogates how we weigh risk as parents, how we judge one another's parenting and what the costs might be--not just to parents, but to children, too--of a culture of constant surveillance." ―New York Times Book Review

     

    "Small Animals is a perfect book-club read for parents: It’s well-researched, divisive and enjoyable from start to finish." ―BookPage (Editor's Picks)

     

    "Often funny and always observant, Small Animals is a poignant look at what it means to raise children in modern America." ―Bustle

     

    "Brooks's own personal experience provides the narrative thrust for the book ― she writes unflinchingly about her own experience.... Readers who want to know what happened to Brooks will keep reading to learn how the case against her proceeds, but it's Brooks's questions about why mothers are so judgmental and competitive that give the book its heft." ―NPR

     

    "Engaging, enraging, terrific..." ―New York Post

    "Small Animals attempts to assess how modern American parenthood has become synonymous with fear and has 'made people worse, or at least, worse to each other.' Brooks arrives at many possible answers." ―TIME

     

    "Parents will flock to read Small Animals... an engaging account of life as a modern-day parent providing a deeper understanding of the ways fear and judgment affect the limits and freedoms we give ourselves and our children." Booklist (starred review)

     

    “Small Animals by Kim Brooks, came at me like a giant exhalation, a release of so much of the stress I’ve carried around since become a mother. I forced my advance copy on someone within an hour of finishing it, telling her it would change her life. It’s already changed mine.” ―Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

     

    "Small Animals is one of the most important parenting books of our generation--and a gripping read besides." Claire Dederer, New York Times bestselling author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses and Love and Trouble: A Reckoning

    "This exceptionally insightful work is an act of service to humanity." ―Sarah Manguso, author of 300 Arguments

     

    "Kim Brooks offers an engrossing, insightful examination of the countless absurdities, identity crises, and obnoxious obstacles that come with raising children at a time when wisdom and perspective are the rarest qualities around."– Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly columnist for New York Magazine and author of How to Be a Person in the World

     

    "A can't-put-it-down narrative and a sharp diagnosis of the fears, guilt, and costs to both parents and children of the contemporary fixation on keeping kids safe."―Sarah Hepola, New York Times bestselling author of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget


    Small Animals is a funny, empathetic, and eloquent report from deep inside the bunker of our national anxiety disorder. Profoundly thoughtful and richly detailed, it shows us how we got here and offers moms and dads some guidance, as well as some moral support, as to how it might be possible to find a way out of our self-inflicted reign of terror.
    William Deresiewicz, New York Times bestselling author of Excellent Sheep

  • Contact

    Twitter: @KA_Brooks

    E-Mail: KimBrookswriter [at] gmail [dot] com

    For speaking: Scottie.bowditch [at] macmillan [dot] com

    https://www.macmillanspeakers.com/speaker/kim-brooks/

    For editorial services: info [at] StoryStudio [dot] org

    Representation: Maria Massie, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin,

    (212)352-2055, email: info [at] lmqlit [dot] com

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    The Houseguest : Now Available

    It is the summer of 1941 and Abe Auer, a Russian immigrant and small-town junkyard owner, has become disenchanted with his life. So when his friend Max Hoffman, a local rabbi with a dark past, asks Abe to take in a European refugee, he agrees, unaware that the woman coming to live with him is a volatile and alluring actress named Ana Beidler. Ana regales the Auer family with tales of her lost stardom and charms and mystifies Abe with her glamour and unabashed sexuality, forcing him to confront his own desire as well as the ghost of his dead brother.

    As news filters out of Europe, American Jews struggle to make sense of the atrocities. Some want to bury their heads in the sand while others want to create a Jewish army that would fight Hitler and promote bold, wide-spread rescue initiatives. And when a popular Manhattan synagogue is burned to the ground, our characters begin to feel the drumbeat of war is marching ever closer to home.

    Set on the eve of America’s involvement in World War II, The Houseguest examines a little-known aspect of the war and highlights the network of organizations seeking to help Jews abroad, just as masses of people seeking to escape Europe are turned away from American shores. It moves seamlessly from the Yiddish theaters of Second Avenue to the junkyards of Utica to the covert world of political activists, Jewish immigrants, and the stars and discontents of New York’s Yiddish stage. Ultimately, The Houseguest is a moving story about identity, family, and the decisions that define who we will become.

     

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