Inspired by her 1000 Words of Summer project, for which she encourages a growing online community to write a thousand words daily for two weeks straight, author Jami Attenberg has assembled a collection of helpful essays by a veritable who’s who of contemporary writers, including Alexander Chee, R. O. Kwon, Min Jin Lee, Ada Limón, Carmen Maria Machado, Celeste Ng, and Emma Straub. In 1000 Words, portions of which have appeared in Poets & Writers Magazine, Attenberg rightly leans on community to provide support, encouragement, and inspiration. “If we reach out to others admitting our challenges while also cheering one another on, we’re all capable of more than we expected,” she writes. In a noteworthy contribution to the book, Roxane Gay writes, “So today, you’re writing 1000 words. And you will write many more words after that. Those words will matter. They may not change the world, but they will change you.”
