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We want to know what book groups are doing these days during the pandemic. One of my book clubs has not met at all. The second, which has a number of young moms in it, has met a few times on Zoom, just to catch up socially; they have not had a lot of time for pleasure reading. We are planning to try a socially distanced meeting outside next week to discuss BIG SUMMER by Jennifer Weiner. May the weather cooperate!

Special Request: This had us wondering what other book groups are doing. We see many are meeting virtually or via email. Others are hosting author chats. With this in mind, we put together a survey where we ask what your group is doing. Please take two minutes (seriously, that is all the time it is going to take) and answer it here!

Last Monday night, I had the pleasure of attending a virtual "Writers at Home" event that was a perk for frequent attendees of BOOKTHEWRITER's Pop-Up Book Groups. Jeanine Cummins was the author guest, and she and Jean Hanff Korelitz, who hosted the program, had a wonderful discussion about AMERICAN DIRT, with questions from the attendees. Jeanine shared how she wrote two complete versions of a novel with similar themes, and abandoned them before she penned the bestselling book that we all now know. The sudden death of her father in late 2016 devastated her, and for a while she just could not get out of bed. She started writing as a way to get her bearings again. She went to the desert to volunteer in a migrant camp, and by the time she left, she had the full arc of the story.