|
Hi Friends,
It’s here! Pub day for By Any Other Name! If you’re reading this I’m probably on a plane headed to a city near you. I’m excited to meet so many of you on tour, and I’m thrilled to introduce you to the book I feel like my entire career has been leading up to — the book I was meant to write. I’m also glad that so many others agree that this one's special:
independent bookstores have named By Any Other Name an IndieNext pick, librarians across the country have voted it on to the LibraryReads list, Amazon editors has selected it as a best of the month in the Literature & Fiction space, and Apple Books named it a best eBook and audiobook, as well!
In case you’ve missed the last zillion newsletters where I talk about By Any Other Name — this is a book about how women have been written out of history by the men who are writing it; it’s about giving credit where it's due. It follows two women — in 1581, the real life Emilia Bassano, a female playwright who cannot put her work in front of the public because she’s a woman…so she pays a man for the use of his name. That man? William Shakespeare. And in 2024, Melina Green — a female playwright who’s written a show about her ancestor Emilia Bassano, but can’t get any traction in a male dominated Broadway industry. Will she too elide herself from history to see her words performed on a stage?
This book is a page turner. It’s historical fiction. It’s modern fiction. It’s the spiciest thing I’ve ever written. And I think it’s coming at just the right time — when being a woman still means struggling for your rights, and struggling to be heard.
If I am not going to see you on tour, I hope you’ll pick up a copy and that you’ll love learning about Emilia Bassano as much as I loved writing about her. Let’s make her a household name, after 400 years of being silenced!
XO,
Jodi
| 
