Editor of Hundreds of Books, and Now, Author of One

Big news and you're getting it here first!

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We’re getting personal today, because I have something big to tell you! As always, you’re hearing it here first. 

If there’s one piece of advice I give to writers again and again, it’s this: write the book you can’t not write. You can tell how strongly I feel about this because why else would an editor dare to use a double negative?! 

So what I have to tell you today is that I followed my own advice. 

After 15 years of supporting and developing writers as an editor, I’ve surprised even myself with a rare jumping of the desk to the author’s side. It feels just the right kind of reckless to hit send and spill the tea with you all today because I’ve been sitting on this secret for so long! I wrote what became the first words of this book in 2019, before I knew it was a book, and then wrote in earnest through three years of nap times and nursing sessions (there are no perfect working conditions, and there never will be).

The first thing I need you to know about this book is that it’s personal narrative, meaning that it’s both personal (God help me) and every page is designed to reach outward from the particular coordinates of my human experience to yours, in the spirit of making room for us all. 

When I write, I tunnel vision. I blaze. I don’t know any other way to write except by immersion (and the attendant obsessiveness, naturally!). As my husband told me, at the beginning, “This book seized you.” 

If I can be so bold, I wrote it to move you. I went deep within myself as I wrote the first draft, then I went deep to write for you in the many, many drafts following (see: obsessiveness, and also good editors). Because I am terrible at small talk, I wrote a book about ultimate things—life, death, resurrection and the terrible risks of loving and loving again, even after everything. In the end, this was the book I could not not write, and after three years of drafting, scrapping, sculpting and revising, I’m so pleased to introduce you to…

About the Book

✨ Coming from Convergent Books on October 15, 2024 ✨

A gorgeous memoir that honors life’s deep griefs, great joys, and unsettled in-betweens through every sacred season, assuring us that we are never alone

Exquisitely told and urgently resonant, Even After Everything is a love letter to anyone who has opened their heart only to be hurt. Stephanie Duncan Smith proposes that it’s not through grit or forced resilience that you will find a way forward, but through receiving the full spectrum of our lives, just as we receive the empathy of God-with-us in every moment.

Duncan Smith’s disorientation began when she lost her first pregnancy on the winter solstice, just as the world readied to celebrate its most historic birth on Christmas. Then a new yet uncertain pregnancy unfolded parallel to the pandemic, until nearly one year to the day of her loss, she gave birth to her daughter at the peak of mortality in their city. These contradictions compelled Duncan Smith into a desperate search for steadiness, which she found in the liturgical year as a grounding force and the promise that we are seen by God in every season.

In Even After Everything, Duncan Smith traverses the church’s circle of time and reorients herself and us in the sacred story told through Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, and Ordinary Time. She reveals the sacred year—through its endless interplay of love, loss, risk, and resurrection—as a mirror to the human experience, an anchor for turbulent times, and a womb strong enough to encompass every human care. At its heart lives the promise of God-with-us, inviting us into the spiritual practice of taking courage in the trust that we are accompanied in everything, and love will always have the last word.

You better believe we are going to be taking notes here together at Slant Letter about the writing and publishing process. I can’t wait to share more of the inside story of how this book came to be, and for you to read it this fall. In the meantime, here’s what a some of my early readers have said about it: 

“The power of the sentences—it’s exquisite.” 

“You have an ability to write in a way that makes you feel something.” 

“GORGEOUS!”

Who is this book for?

Even After Everything is for anyone seeking solid ground and self-compassion in the midst of life’s defining before and afters. It’s for those who are suspicious of joy and certain the other shoe is about to drop. It’s for those, like me, who are worn out by any spirituality that sentimentalizes or papers over pain, and seek instead a spirituality that levels about the hard things so that it might be trusted when it comes to hope. Most of all, this is a book for those who have loved, lost, and dared to take the risk of loving again, in any of its forms.

If any of this resonates, I’d invite you to preorder your copy now, which is the #1 way you can support this book.

If Slant Letter is the study of craft and what makes it work, Even After Everything is the story where you can see these craft principles in the wild. In other words, I took everything I know about the creative process and writing narrative that resonates, and put it in the most personal form I know how to give to you. I can’t wait for you to read it!

✨You can also show your support by liking this post and restacking it. As always, you’re hearing this news here first, and I will be announcing more broadly later this week. Thank you for celebrating with me! Let’s do this!!

Take heart and stay feisty,

🌿🌿🌿 P.S. Check out the fun stop-gap motion video I created to show you the cover! These plants are called resurrection ferns—watch and you’ll see the pure magic they are capable of!