Catherine Newman is the author of the kids' how-to books How to Be a Person and What Can ISay?, the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, the middle-grade novel One Mixed-Up Night, and the food and parenting blog Ben and Birdy, and she edits the non-profit kids' cooking magazine ChopChop. She is also the etiquette columnist for Real Simple magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Boston Globe, and many other publications. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family.
On Being 40(ish) (2019) Fifteen Writers on the Prime of Their Lives edited by Lindsey Mead
Crush (2011) 26 Real-life Tales of First Love edited by Andrea N Richesin
Catherine Newman recommends
All That Life Can Afford (2025) Emily Everett "All That Life Can Afford absolutely sparkles. It's somehow completely romantic even as it plays with the conventions of romance; it's luminous while questioning luminousness; and it's a book with the tenderness of grief at its heart. Emily Everett is a massive talent. I can't wait to read more."
Fundamentally (2025) Nussaibah Younis "Tart, tender, trenchant, and hilarious, Fundamentally is a brilliant novel about faith and friendship that refuses to be any one single thing - because it is EVERYTHING. Nussaibah Younis is a genius."
Goodbye Birdie Greenwing (2024) Ericka Waller "Oh, the exquisite, tender misfits in Goodbye Birdie Greenwing! I love them all. I love the way loneliness is gathered up into such a delightfully odd community. I love the entire book."
Blank (2024) Zibby Owens "This is a sunny rom-com with a deep, dark heart - comedic and sad in equal measures. Yes, it's a meta-satire about the publishing industry, but it's also an authentically serious story about the pressure to be everything to everyone. Or, in other words, about what it means to be a woman."
Significant Others (2024) Zoe Eisenberg "Significant Others is so intimately raw and hopeful, I couldn't put it down and when I finally did, because I'd finished it, I had literal goosebumps. To write this way about families and friendships made and remade, about the push and pull of love and the way we're all just crazy puzzle pieces floating around, trying to understand what the whole picture might look like and how beautiful it might be - amazing"
Piglet (2024) Lottie Hazell "Piglet is luscious and disturbing and propulsive, and I completely devoured it. It's a book about hunger and secrecy and women made small by convention. And it's a book that tears at the surface of things to reveal the vast, messy truth of a body with a beating heart."
Welcome Home, Stranger (2023) Kate Christensen "A fantastic study in loss - the grief kind and the yearning too, oh my god the yearning! Plus menopause. Plus Portland, Maine. I loved it."
My Last Innocent Year (2023) Daisy Alpert Florin "I tore through this sparkling and gritty coming-of-age novel, nodding the whole time. Yes, desire is messy. Sexuality can blur into violence. All the difficult, gray truths don't resolve into black-and-white clarity just because we wish they would. Yes, yes, yes. Daisy Florin is an astonishing writer and My Last Innocent Year is a remarkable book."