Read Like a Writer is back — and we're starting with grief (and a whole lot of humor)
Welcome to Year Three of Read Like a Writer.
If you're new here: this isn't your average book club. We don't just ask what you felt — we ask how it was made. We read the way writers do: with one eye on the story and one eye on the seams, always asking what holds it together.
This summer, we're opening with Angela Nissel's Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead — a memoir about caregiving, loss, and trying to remain strong like your mother when your mother is gone. It is also, somehow, hilarious. That's not a contradiction. In Nissel's hands, it's the whole point.
I chose this book because of what it asks us to do as writers: hold two impossible things at once. Grief and humor. Chaos and love. Honesty so sharp it almost doesn't feel safe. If you've ever sat down to write something true and felt the weight of it, this memoir is going to teach you something about how to carry that weight without putting it down.
A few things to know before you begin:
Nissel is a television writer by trade — she's written for Scrubs, Mixed-ish, and The Other Black Girl, among others. That background shows up in her prose in ways worth watching. The pacing. The scene construction. The way a single line of dialogue can do the work of a paragraph. As you read, notice where you feel the TV writer in her — and where you feel something else entirely.
Also worth knowing: this is a memoir about a complicated mother-daughter relationship. The love is real. So is the distance. Nissel doesn't flatten either one, and that restraint is its own craft lesson.
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YOUR READING SCHEDULE
We'll move through the book together over five weeks, with our final gathering in Week 6. Here's the pace:
Week 1 (June 7) — Chapters [1-4, Prologue]: Let the voice in. No pressure to analyze yet — just read.
Week 2 (June 14) — Chapters [5–8]: We start to look at the seams.
Week 3 (June 21) — Chapters [9–12]: Mid-read Nook conversation (details to come).
Week 4 (June 28) — Chapters [13–16]: The home stretch begins.
Week 5 (July 7) — Chapters [17–19, Epilogue]: Finish the book. Sit with it.
Week 6 (July 12) — The Gathering: In-person (+ virtual option) @ Reparations Club
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📚 GET THE BOOK
We will close out the book discussion with a summer gathering at Reparations Club, one of Los Angeles's most essential Black-owned bookstores on July 12th, 10am-11:30am. If you haven't picked up your copy yet, we'd love for you to grab it directly from them — it's a small act that keeps community-centered spaces like this one alive, and it means something that our dollars go there.
→ Order from Reparations Club: https://rep.club/products/good-grief
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This year, we're also doing something new. We've created a Read Like a Writer club on Bookum, a platform built specifically for book communities. Think of the club as the space between our emails — where the conversation doesn't have to wait for next week.
Inside the club right now: my full essay on why I chose this book and what I think it's doing that most grief memoirs don't, plus your first annotation prompt to try as you read.
See you inside.
With love and a dog-eared page,
Ashley, Founder & Executive Director
Permission to Write
