Now that my book is officially out in the world, I’m happy to announce that I’m taking on a few private writing clients this summer. Let’s dig into your memoir or non-fiction manuscript together.As I recently said over at Memoir Land, “I love the work of shaping a book—whether it’s the earliest stages of an idea, the crucible of the proposal, wrangling an early draft, or polishing a manuscript.” I’m also here for shorter writing sprints, including personal essays and reported features.Just reply to this email—or send a message to tracyquen [at] gmail [dot] com—if you’re interested in learning more. And if you’re new here and wondering about my background, check the bio.
I have lived so many lives since my book came out two weeks ago. Just ahead of pub day, my sister Kathy visited the Bay Area for the first time. We gave her a tour of San Francisco, visiting the sea lions at Pier 39, eating burritos at Taqueria Cancun, and driving the twists and turns of Lombard Street as my 8-year-old who hates roller coasters moaned, “I don’t like this.” Kathy and I spent hours in my childhood home in Berkeley, sitting in our mom’s bedroom, which looks so much the same since she died thirteen years ago, only the wood-slatted blinds are forever drawn. We looked through her jewelry and packed up pieces for Kathy to take home to Atlanta, including a brass brooch of a snake that had once caused my paternal grandmother to remark, “It takes a special kind of woman to wear a snake.” Before Kathy and I left for the book launch, my kid gave a big hug to his aunt—and not the obligatory kind. He poured himself into it. Kathy was going to leave for the airport in the early hours of the morning, long before he got up, so it was his last chance to say goodbye. “I love you,” he said, effortlessly. “I’ll miss you.” My event at Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley was the kind of magic that makes me feel superstitious, like looking back at it might undo its existence. Kathy met some of our mom’s closest friends for the first time. My friends showed up with bouquets, custom “TCF” hats, a book-cover cake, and bottles of Tejava, our mom’s favorite drink. Afterward, the folks at Mrs. Dalloway’s sent my publicist a recap, writing that they give all of their events an internal “Vibe Score” on a scale of one-to-10 and that this one got a 10 as “a complete love fest.” I must admit that I spent the days leading up to this love fest feeling nauseous and barely able to eat. A couple times I woke up retching like I had morning sickness. Why did I do this to myself? Why did I think this was a good idea? As soon as the event started, I was fine. More than fine. It felt like it was all worth it. The culmination of four years of work.
My Mother’s Daughter: Finding Myself in My Family’s Fractured Past has gotten starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus. It was also selected for Amazon Editors’ Best Books of 2026 and as one of Publishers Weekly’s most-anticipated memoirs. New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Traister says, “What a beautiful, immersive book… I cried!” Kate Manne calls it “the tour de force of a memoir you need to read this year.” People love to make comparisons between childbirth and book publishing, which I sometimes find annoying. Childbirth is childbirth. It is incomparable. Also: I don’t think of my book as a baby—it is more formidable than that. But, similar to childbirth, I felt transformed after that event in a way that is as undeniable as it is hard to describe. “It feels like I went through some kind of portal,” I told a friend after the launch. Since then, as I’ve bopped around on my mini book tour, I’ve visited four cities and spent roughly 16 hours in the air. In New York, I grabbed lunch with one of my favorite memoirists—someone I had met only once before but who nonetheless offered to be “an island of warmth and calm” in the midst of book tour. Yes, please. Over Korean barbeque, we talked about the grief of finishing a manuscript, the search for that next big obsession, and the books our kids love. When I walked into the bookstore that night in Brooklyn, the first people I saw were my in-laws, who had caravaned down with some family from Boston, and I burst right into tears. I hid in the backroom so I didn’t see anybody else beforehand, which was a good thing because then the audience filled up with former colleagues who have shaped me as a writer, reporter, and feminist. Each event has been filled with brilliant artists, journalists, doulas, creatives, podcasters, political thinkers, booksellers, academics, and more. I’ve met internet friends IRL, reunited with long-lost co-workers, and connected with former interview subjects. People I haven’t seen since high school or college have surprised me at events. I’ve met adoptees, birth mothers, and folks who have made family discoveries through DNA tests. People came up after each event and told me that they cried or got chills during the conversation. I say this not as a compliment to myself but as a testament to how people showed up: open, available, and present. I’m so grateful for it. The nausea returned before each event—I worried about no one showing up or getting stumped by a question. Each time, my worries proved unnecessary, but I didn’t know that until I was on the other side. It’s like each event was a new portal. C. flew down with me to L.A. for just over 24 hours and we grabbed dinner at a cute Italian restaurant before the event. He watched as I took the tiniest bites of my gnocchi and then chewed mechanically. Earlier that day, I had panic texted some friends asking for help with a signal boost because we didn’t have enough RSVPs. I got a speedy response from two separate friends: “On it.” We totally filled that place up in the end—and not just with butts in chairs, but with people who were engaged and asked smart questions. I actually don’t think it had much of anything to do with those signal boosts, but I can tell you that they worked their own kind of magic by making me feel less alone. Again, the childbirth metaphor. I’m reminded of the anxious middle-of-the-night email I sent to a mom friend a couple days postpartum about fucking swaddles. I’d discovered that our special velcro swaddle had come partially undone such that the fabric crept up over my baby’s mouth in a distressing way. She didn’t have a miracle solution to my swaddle dilemma, but she empathized with how scary and exhausting it all was. She had been there. “Have fun tonight,” an author friend texted minutes before I stepped into the bookstore that night in L.A. “Whatever it is will be worth it!” It is so much easier to agree now.
In reviewing my book recently, Nona Willis Aronowitz called it “a personal and political journey that is almost psychedelic in its immersiveness,” and I feel that way about these past fourteen days. In fact, I feel a lot like I did after returning home from visiting Kathy in-person for the first time after the DNA test connected us. As I write in the book:
I feel the meaning melting away when I try to say one true thing about these past weeks. Bookstores do so much more than sell books. Creative community is everything. Reading is magic. Art is a way to share grief. We’re all in this together. Love! Just the other day, an interviewer was asking me about the best advice I’ve ever gotten and I thought of something my mom wrote me in an email after a terrible breakup in my twenties. “The loneliness, I think, can be endured when you have a vague ‘faith’ in the idea that things will get better,” she wrote. “I know that is hopelessly corny and meaningless, but also true. Ick!!!” This is where I find myself right now: “Ick!!! But true.”
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