Dear Beautiful Friends,
The Beauty Hunter Q&A is back, and pull up a chair, because you are in for a major treat. Say hello to best-selling author, writer, reader, book critic and recommender, and dress devotee
.*Joanna took time out of a super lively schedule to plunge into the Beauty conversation: what Beauty means to her, why it matters, who really cares about Beauty and why?, and when Beauty first wriggled into the fabric of her life.
“Beauty has this tendency to shock you out of yourself. To take you outside of your own thoughts and feelings, and internal turmoil or complacency. Beauty leads you to a new perspective, shifts your emotions, or thinking. It surprises you.” -Joanna Rakoff
There’s also a major dress-wearing devotion that Joanna shares on her artful, welcoming, and very smart Instagram account.
May is Joanna’s wear-a-dress-everyday month. It’s not too late for you to play, too. May is only half finished.
“Even as a tiny child, I oriented my life so that beauty pervades every minute of it as much as possible in all different ways.”
Consider this luminous beauty seeker, walking her Boston neighborhood in a beautiful blue dress, bringing a smile and a “thank-you” from passers-by.
“I really do think that people are drawn to beauty in the way a moth is drawn to a flame.”
Why Beauty matters
“I believe that in a time of political and financial turmoil, beauty is more important than ever. It allows us moments of joy, enlightened moments, moments of escaping the tediousness of what surrounds us, and we need those moments to truly function.” -Joanna Rakoff
🦩🦩🦩🦩
☀️To watch the video, listen to the conversation, and hear Joanna’s gorgeous wisdom and insight on why Beauty matters and how she connects to it, click on the video at the top of the page. 🎬
More about Joanna, her books, her classes, and more.
Check out Joanna’s About Me on Instagram. It’s like she invited you into her home to meet the family.
Take Joannas May 27 Zoom course, How to Be Your Authentic Self on Instagram. I’ll be there, and I hear it will be a great group.
Get the full details and register here.
Joanna has, in my opinion, the most engaging, natural, intimate, and welcoming Instagram going. If you want to up your game, and see how to create a social media presence that is all you, don’t miss it!
Read her best-selling memoir, My Salinger Year. I loved it so much I read it twice.
Watch the film adaption of My Salinger Year, starring Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver.
Read her best-selling novel, A Fortunate Age.
Read Joanna Rakoff Recommends: A Life in Books (and other wonderful things) at
’s ab-fab Substack, Beyond.Subscribe to Joanna’s upcoming Books and Dresses, on Substack
Photo by Mark Ostow Visit Joanna at her website.
Joanna Rakoff is the author of the novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction and the Elle Readers Prize, and, more recently, author of the bestselling memoir My Salinger Year. She’s written for Oprah Daily, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and many other publications. Her new memoir, The Fifth Passenger, will be out in 2025. The film adaptation of My Salinger Year is currently streaming wherever you watch movies. Visit Joanna at her website here.
*Apologies to Joanna and viewers for how I so abruptly and clumsily concluded the conversation. Oops, out of Zoom practice.
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