It is sometimes so difficult to express true thanks in person, let alone tell people how much they mean to you, that I am always grateful whenever I have a chance to do so in print, assured I won’t spoil the moment by sounding inadvertently sarcastic or looking sheepishly down at my shoes.
First of all, I want to thank my editor and publisher, the awesome (in the godlike sense of the word) Carrie Kania, for her unparalleled patience, support, and insight. She is very simply the best, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been taken under her wing. I am also eternally grateful to everyone at Harper Perennial, especially the wonderful Brittany Hamblin, Amy Baker, Alberto Rojas, Erica “Precious” Barmash, Calvert Morgan, and my darling Joseph Papa. And to Robin Bilardello, who is a talent to be reckoned with.
Huge thanks to Rebecca Friedman, my agent and friend, who has provided me with such devoted encouragement over the years that I often think there must be something wrong with her. Thank you also to Adam Korn, who has always believed in me. Big thanks to Kaya Chwals, Christian Schaub, and Hettie Veneziano for not asking too many questions when I asked them how to say “rape” in various world languages, and to the brilliant Rachel Friedman, who draws a mean pair of underpants.
Thank you to BJ Lockhart, Lauren Marks, Stephen Brackett, Peter Cook, Michael Schulman, Nick Jones, Reginald Veneziano, Evan Cabnet, and Julie Klausner, who have all listened to me freak out countless times over the years and only rarely betrayed their annoyance, and also to Jesse Oxfeld, Daniel Nester, Ron Hogan, Jason Boog, Leonard Beugher, Elisa Beugher, Timothy Schaeffert, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Mike Edison, Mike Albo, Joshua Neuman, Will Doig, Pete Smith, Liz Meriwether, and Beth Black. Thank you to David Rakoff for being so incredibly kind, and to Colin Shepherd for the delicious insider factoids.
Gratitude beyond gratitude to Arjen Hosper and Martijn Vorstenbosch. Without them everything would have been TERRIBLE.
Thank you to my parents, Aveva and Marty Shukert, who have always let me do things they knew were bad ideas, and to Ariel Shukert, who is my sister and no one else’s.
And most of all, thank you to Ben Abramowitz, for taking me away from all this. I hope it was worth it.