Episode 16: Best Selling Author of I Miss You When I Blink - Reinvention and Letting Things Go

Mary Laura Philpott

Mary Laura Philpott is the author of I Miss You When I Blink, the nationally bestselling memoir-in-essays. Her writing has been featured frequently by The New York Times and also appears in such outlets as The Washington Post, The Paris Review Daily, O The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, and others. Across her work, Philpott examines the overlap of the absurd and the profound in life, literature, and culture.

Additionally, Philpott is an Emmy-winning co-host of A Word on Words, the lively literary mini-program on Nashville Public Television. A “book enthusiast at large” who often interviews and profiles fellow writers, she worked as a bookseller for several years and was the founding editor of the digital magazine MUSING for Parnassus Books. She also wrote and illustrated the book Penguins with People Problems. Philpott enjoys traveling around the country to speak with people about creativity, work, the ups and downs of perfectionism, reinvention, reading, and writing. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her family. (Oh, and she goes by both names: “Mary Laura”)

I Miss You When I Blink was named one of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2019, a Best Book of the Year by Esquire and Real Simple, and #1 on the Indie Next List by booksellers nationwide. A finalist for the Southern Book Prize, it was also highlighted on must-read or most-anticipated lists from Newsweek, BuzzFeed, Town & Country, theSkimm, ELLE Australia, Lit Hub, Southern Living, Bustle, The Millions, BookRiot, Garden & Gun, and the Chicago Review of Books, among others. Read more about it here.