ESCAPE VELOCITY
HOW ONE 70-YEAR-OLD PUSH-PULLED HER WAY OUT OF HER TOO-MUCH-NOT-ENOUGH FAMILY
70 MICRO-MEMOIRS, 70 WORDS EACH
Coming February 27, 2026! Updates here and on my Substack, Write It Like It Is.
My third book is part flash nonfiction, part prose poem. Through one lens, the collection is about growing up in a loving but enmeshed family, searching for selfhood and love and sex (all together, is that too much to ask?!), and finally celebrating being single and whole at 70. Through another lens, it’s about the wild social and sexual trajectory women experienced between the 1960s and today. It’s also about confusion, hope, resilience, passion, loss, aging, and acceptance. And some really bad dates. All in 4,900 words. And, BONUS, the volume will be designed and illustrated by the fabulous artist Anna Hall, who is crafting 70 black-and-white images to accompany each micro.
Advance praise is rolling in already:
"Deborah Sosin’s cleverly conceived Escape Velocity is a potent mix of intimacy, wit, and mounting angst over the inevitability of aging, offered in crisp, 70-word capsules of remarkable honesty. Sosin portrays a fascinating, surprising life, ending on a perfect note of hope and resilience."
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire
“In spare, illustrated morsels infused with psychological insights, Deborah Sosin unfurls a moving, later-in-life coming-of-age story that will resonate with many—especially those who have struggled to untangle themselves from complicated family dynamics and limiting societal expectations.”
—Sari Botton, author of And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, and editor-in-chief of Oldster Magazine.
“Sosin’s beautifully precise seventy-word entries are expansive, deeply thoughtful, and often very funny explorations of the moments that shape a life. Generous, heartbreaking, and evocatively illustrated by Anna Hall, Escape Velocity reminds us of the transformative power we hold when we tell our own story.”
—Hester Kaplan, author of Twice Born
Check out "The Macro Micro-Memoir Challenge," on Brevity Blog, January 22, 2025, which chronicles the conception and construction of Escape Velocity.
