Based on her lauded commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College, this stirring essay by bestselling author Ann Patchett offers hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads, whether graduating, changing careers, or transitioning from one life stage to another. With wit and candor, Patchett tells her own story of attending college, graduating, and struggling with the inevitable question, What now?
From student to line cook to teacher to waitress and eventually to award-winning author, Patchett's own life has taken many twists and turns that make her exploration genuine and resonant. As Patchett writes, "'What now?' represents our excitement and our future, the very vitality of life." She highlights the possibilities the unknown offers and reminds us that there is as much joy in the journey as there is in reaching the destination.
Ann Patchett is the author of the novels Run (a New York Times Bestseller), The Patron Saint of Liars (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Taft (winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize), The Magician's Assistant (Guggenheim Fellowship), and Bel Canto (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, England's Orange Prize, and the Book Sense Book of the Year Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), which has been translated into more than thirty languages. Her nonfiction book, Truth & Beauty, was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the winner of a Books for a Better Life Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has written for many publications, including Atlantic Monthly, Harper's magazine, Gourmet, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and the Washington Post. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
112 pages
