Your Essay about Sinéad

Score a free book!

Nothing Compares to You, the essay collection/celebration of Sinéad O’Connor that I coedited with Sonya Huber, comes out in five weeks and one day, and for the past month my head’s been spinning with the logistics of media outreach, contributor wrangling, event planning, and travel. It’s all coming together but I have to say I will be happy when this phase is over and all the boulders and pebbles of a book release are just tumbling down their various hills, landing where they may.

The graphic above gives you an indication of where we’ll be when. Not on the graphic is our just-added July 15 book talk in DUBLIN, at the storied Hodges Figgis, Ireland’s oldest bookshop. Details are still in the works, but it looks to be me, contributors Allyson McCabe and Sinéad Gleeson, and a moderator TBD. I am excited and a honestly nervous about launching the book not just in Ireland but in Dublin, Sinéad O’Connor’s home town. Who am I, an unknown American, to honor their local hero? I guess we’ll find out.

In the meantime, Sonya and I had a wonderful time at the Nonfiction Now conference on the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Indiana, last week. A gathering of nonfiction writers from around the world, the conference doubled as a very casual pre-release party for the book. Friends and contributors gathered Thursday night at the appropriately named Danny Boy Draft Works to raise a pint and toast the project. It was great to meet some of the writers I’ve been exchanging emails with for a year, including Sarah Viren, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, and Jill Christman. And, as someone pointed out, it seemed fitting to soft launch a book about Sinéad O’Connor in the looming Catholic shadow of Touchdown Jesus.

Martha, Sarah, Stephanie, Jill, and Sonya: real people at the other end of emails.

While we were there, Sonya and I decided to run a little pre-release publicity campaign. We wished over and over as we compiled the essays in Nothing Compares to You that we could have included twice as many authors. Every day I think of more people I wish we’d been able to rope into the book. So now we'd like to feature more work. Your work. Do you have an essay, poem, flash piece, or a few paragraphs about Sinéad you'd like to share? Please send pieces of 2,000 words or fewer to sineadanthology@gmail.com. Pieces selected will appear in the countdown to the book's publication in June and July on Sonya's Substack newsletter "Nuts and Bolts,” where the first piece, Erika Meitner’s poem “Sinéad O’Connor Was Right All Along,” just posted this morning. All rights revert to the author after publication, and if at any point you need us to take down your essay for the purposes of future publications, we will be happy to do so. Compensation for those chosen for publication will be one copy of the hardcover anthology.

And, that’s it for today. I’ve been working on something longer about the boom in weight training for women, and my unshakeable belief that in three years, maybe sooner, the culture will be talking about dance the way it’s talking about lifting right now. But for now I’m afraid it will be all book content, all the time. Sorry, but not really. Buy our book! Come to an event! And watch this space for more.

PS: I’ve also been dancing. Please enjoy this video snippet from the dress rehearsal for Visceral Encore’s “Elemental,” which ran last weekend in Chicago. A couple wobbles here but overall not bad. It, like book tour planning, came together after a lot of work!