Map 2E

This year marks 25 years since the first time I kissed a girl. To mark that occasion, as well as 18 years of same-sex marriage being legal in Massachusetts, on May 17th 2022 I am releasing a new edition of my memoir MAP. 

This second edition of MAP includes revised text here and there that reflects additional wisdom; a note from my current self at the end of the book; and a fancy new cover. Although there aren't a lot of changes from the original, they are meaningful ones, and all-in-all it's a better book. 

It will not be available forever. I learned from the original publication that it is a very different experience walking around in the world with a memoir available for sale, and I have very much appreciated these recent years of building new friendships without that in the mix. So, even though 2E, like the original, is print-on-demand, it will at some point go out of print again. If you want to read MAP, this is the time to get your hands on it. And if you do, and we're friends or colleagues, I'd appreciate knowing that you got a copy—and when you read it. It helps to keep the relationship balanced.  

Where to find MAP: 

Amazon — Here you'll find the most comprehensive reviews. The book may or may not become available for preorder before May 17th. 

Barnes and Noble - MAP is available here now for pre-order.

MAP is being distributed via Ingram, for easy library ordering. The ISBN is 979-8-9854265-3-3. 

Other online retailers will be hit or miss, mostly miss. This is due to the intersection of power dynamics in the publishing industry and my attempt to keep a fair chunk of the profit from this book I spent a decade of my life writing.

About the book:

As a late-blooming, sexually-confused college senior, Audrey Beth Stein was looking for love, but she never expected it to arrive via email, from someone she first knew only as catrina@juno.com...

It was 1996. A time when the Indigo Girls had just performed their first explicitly gay songs, Ellen DeGeneres was preparing to come out on national television, and Tinder and OkCupid did not yet exist. A time when being queer was just a little bit easier than admitting you'd met someone through the internet.

Offering layers of introspection and insight reminiscent of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep and Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things, this coming-of-age memoir combines the page-turning exuberance of falling in love for the first time, the disorienting clarity of loss, and the triumph of letting go of the training wheels.

**Lambda Literary Award Finalist**

Newer Publications

 

Out of print

Map is now out of print. Curious what will arise next.

Welcome

Thanks for visiting! This blog is a historical document, much like my memoir Map. It begins in 2009 two months before publishing Map and shares some very personal moments along that journey, including the decision to unpublish the book two and a half years later. Unpublishing may not be a usual part of a book's path, but I believe most artists - most humans - can relate to feelings of exposure and vulnerability and the desire to occasionally go somewhere where no one knows your past. For me, the past four and a half years of inhabiting much more private spaces (which included taking this blog down from the internet) have brought me nearly full circle, eager to share my words again in the hopes of connecting and supporting others on their own artistic and personal journeys.

I hope something in this blog will resonate with you, and if it does, I'd love to hear about it.  You can email me at abstein@alumni.upenn.edu.

If you'd like to know more about what I'm up to now, you can visit my website at audreybethstein.com and also join my mailing list.

I have a box of copies of Map, and I am currently offering a limited number of them for sale. You can buy a copy in person (perhaps while attending one of my fall offerings?) or write a check (payable to me) and mail it to me at Audrey Beth Stein / P.O. Box 380426 / Cambridge MA 02238-0426. Or use the "Buy Now" button on the right to pay online with a credit card (your card will be processed through PayPal, and I will personally mail you the book). Each copy is $25 plus mailing costs -- $5 to send to U.S. addresses (total $30) or $25 to send internationally (total $50).

Emergence

I published Map nearly seven years ago, in October 2009.

I unpublished Map two and a half years later, in April 2012.

Soon thereafter, I took down this blog.

Cocoon.

Transformation.

Months and years passing. Continued transformation. A box of unsold copies of Map sat behind glass doors on my living room bookshelf, while new people entered my life who had never known me as a writer, never known the girl in that memoir, never known the me who had spent a decade of life trying to tell that story.

Mostly, I was grateful for that space and cocooning and quiet and freedom. Whenever I thought about sharing Map with a new friend, my body gently told me no. I reread the book a couple of times in the first year or two and felt tired of it, ready to let go, ready to let go of all the old stories that were holding me back by taking up so much space.

The box of books on the shelf slowly transformed itself in my mind. It became an object, a sculpture, a touchstone. It comforted me, and it didn't beckon to be opened anymore.

In June, I felt the first inklings of desire to share Map again. A friend I'd met after unpublishing was talking about her relationship with the autobiographical play she'd written in college, so long ago. It too was now closed up on a shelf. I was curious, very much wanting to read her play, and it felt like it might be an even trade, your play for my memoir.

I was emerging now. My new growth layers had been making their way in the world for a while, playing and experimenting and building something important. And yet there continued to be a tug inward. Outward and inward, back and forth, sharing and privacy, opening and hibernating and cocooning and exploring.

And in that space, last night, I found myself reaching for Map again. Reading felt different this time. Energizing. Every cell in my body has been replaced since I wrote the book. Nearly every cell has been replaced since I published it. I am no longer the girl in the story or the young woman telling it, and my body knew that, integrated the vastness of my continued growth. The photograph on the cover finally felt like someone else, a much younger self. And yet my essence still flows through the passages as it flows through my life, wise and hopeful and familiar and unwavering.

In the recognition, I prepare to open the box of books again, to republish this blog, to share something beautiful.

I return.

I look around.  I feel the wisdom in my body.  I invite your voice.

Awake

In the middle of the night I find myself awake and grounding.  I know how to create these times for me, sort of, and they also catch me by surprise.  How to be in deep connection with someone and also deeply grounded in myself?  How to inhabit my embodied voice and also embrace a quality of privacy I've never been allowed?  How to interact with the world with both authenticity and safety?  How to embrace the searching unknown and also find something deeply solid to rest in?

Over the past month, since unpublishing Map, I've found myself slowly sifting through pieces of my web presence, culling it.  Who am I showing, and how does that relate to who I am and what I want to share?  From the beginning of my time online, I've been mindful of who might read, and I've made choices with deliberate care.  Yet I'm starting to understand that the choices I've been making are still rooted in a gentler and in some ways more innocent time.  I couldn't possibly have imagined then all the implications of who might be reading now. 

And so, as I give attention to Now, I find myself slowly, with authenticity, dismantling the self-representation that is online.  It is not a take-it-down brick-by-brick process; it is a process that includes adding as well as taking away.  It is deliberate choice, rumination, meandering, curious.  I don't know where I'll end up, what you'll see, what I'll see.  It is hard to do this.  I'm not quite sure what I'm letting go.  I'm not sure what I'll miss, what I'll be grateful for.  I notice that I still feel good about unpublishing Map, that that choice has so far been a gift to myself, that it has brought me some lightness and freedom.  I imagine repeating with this blog, slurping it into one bound book for myself and then taking it down.  I relish this idea, and I also continue, for now, to type.