Everything is Personal: Notes on Now is a collage of hybrid narratives that begin with the stunning events of November 2016 and challenge Laurie Stone, a longtime feminist and writer for the Village Voice, to feel good when everything is bad. She travels to D.C. to bird-dog senators ahead of the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, considers the pleasures and terrors of the #MeToo movement, and remembers her 25 years at the Voice after the announcement of its demise. Freely jumping between social commentary, criticism, memoir, and fiction, Stone reconsiders the legacy of Valerie Solanas and recalls the way that in 1968 the sense of power and hope made you feel it would always be 1968. The pieces are constructed the way dreams and films are: juxtaposing images, racing along with dolly shots, moving in for close-ups, and pulling back for a sweeping sense of time. Woven through the volume are chunks from Stone's Facebook posts that read like tender and funny postcards written to everyone from a time that is unimaginable, even as it’s being lived.

With an introduction by n+1 founding editor Marco Roth.

Praise for Everything is Personal

“This book is a collection of the responses and reminiscences of a writer who, for decades, has been richly connected to the warmth and vibrancy of popular American culture: how it reads, plays, and protests our benighted political life. Savor it slowly, let the pleasure of its sensibility become absorbent.” —Vivian Gornick

“Laurie Stone has been a powerful voice for decades, both in her cultural criticism and in her fiction. Everything is Personal: Notes on Now is as strong and engaged (and often enraged) as you might imagine, a writer mustering all she’s got to take a deep dive into this difficult world. We are lucky to have her opinions, observations, and depth of feeling. More, please.” —Meg Wolitzer

“Everything Is Personal is a galvanic account of our era, a trumpet blare aimed at sleepwalkers. In essays and diary entries that are sharply observant, grieving and generous, Stone seeks links between 1968 and now, meditating with wit and complexity on her own intimate and intellectual history, the question of separating the artist from the art, sexual violence, romantic love, friendship, comedy, television and more. She meditates on the life of Valerie Solanas and the trial of Brett Kavanaugh; she wrestles with her frustration with the “good-girl-ism” embedded in modern feminism and celebrates the messy, unquenchable power of desire. A voice unlike any other, she’s a fearless thinker in an age submerged in fear.” —Emily Nussbaum