Archives de catégorie : London 2025 Nonfiction

LIVING SOFTLY de Tara Stiles

A blueprint for moving from a life of tension and rigidity to one of ease and softness. Readers will learn that softness is a strength. You can accomplish so much more in a soft, easeful state than you can in an amplified environment. It’s time for an alternative to burnout culture, and an alternative to the grit and grin-and-bear-it to success mentality. Discover simple practices to make your life softer and more fulfilling!

LIVING SOFTLY:
Recover Your Energy and a New Sense of Purpose
by Tara Stiles
Balance, Fall 2026
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Tara shows us how we hold ourselves with rigidity at a meeting or during a challenging conversation (making it even more challenging) then go to a yoga class to try to let go. Only to wake up and wonder why our back still throbs. We may even equate stress with achievement. All the while losing sight of what really matters to us.

Tara uses her deep knowledge of yoga, tai chi, shiatsu, and other Eastern practices that are the foundation to unwind our unconscious patterns. Her simple exercises help us walk through our lives with ease, rather than muscling our way through challenges, a surefire path to burnout and physical breakdown. The Six Principles of LIVING SOFTLY, which Tara uses in her workshops as well as with clients include using only the energy that you need (or Wu Wei) and learning to harmonize with your environment, rather than pushing through an agenda.

Readers of Emily Nagoski’s bestselling Burnout are ready for the larger vision of LIVING SOFTLY, which goes far beyond identifying the problem to envisioning a whole new way of living and accomplishing. Tricia Hersey’s readership for Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto will appreciate Tara’s programmatic approach and be drawn to softness as the next step in counter-cultural messaging and living intentionally.

Tara Stiles is a wellness expert, bestselling author, and the founder of Strala Yoga. The Strala approach combines yoga, tai chi, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine to help people release stress, heal, let go of negative habits, and move more easily through everyday challenges. Tara’s bestselling books, which have been translated into multiple languages, include Strala Yoga, Make Your Own Rules Diet, Yoga Cures, and Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, and she has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, Esquire, and Shape. She lives in New York with her husband and their daughter.

TOO SENSITIVE de Sasha Hamdani

For readers who feel exquisitely and painfully hypersensitive, and who blame themselves for it, this book brings validation and a brain-based reason for it: Rejection Sensitive Disorder.

TOO SENSITIVE:
Understanding Rejection Sensitive Disorder and Building Emotional Resilience
by Dr. Sasha Hamdani
Flatiron Books, Fall 2026
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

While rejection and failure are challenging for everyone, those with Rejection Sensitive Disorder (RSD) experience them with an intensity that can feel overwhelming, even debilitating. The term dysphoria, which means « difficult to bear, » perfectly describes the emotional pain RSD can cause. It’s not just a matter of feeling hurt—it can lead to physical symptoms such as headaches, muscle tension, and digestive issues, as well as significant mental health impacts like anxiety and depression.

TOO SENSITIVE dives into the neurobiological roots of RSD, helping readers understand how their emotional sensitivity is not just a personality trait, but a deeply ingrained part of their neurobiology. This work offers not only an explanation of the condition but also practical tools for managing emotional sensitivity in everyday life by introducing CALM YOUR MIND, a simple yet powerful system of 12 strategies designed to help readers regulate their emotions in challenging situations. These principles, grounded in diverse therapeutic approaches, are followed by a comprehensive RSD Toolkit that offers in the moment help with dozens of real-life scenarios.

Ultimately, TOO SENSITIVE helps readers understand that emotional sensitivity is not a flaw, but instead a neurological trait that deserves compassion and care. This book provides actionable strategies to transform emotional sensitivity from a source of pain into a powerful tool for personal growth, resilience, and self-compassion.

Sasha Hamdani, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in ADHD, RSD, and emotional regulation. With a medical background that includes an accelerated program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and residency training at the University of Arizona and University of Kansas Medical Center, Dr. Hamdani combines clinical expertise with personal experience. As the creator of FocusGenie and the author of Self-Care for People with ADHD (part of a series published by Adams Media in 2023), she has become a leading voice in mental health. Honored with the CHADD Early Career Influencer Award and invited to the inaugural White House Creator Mental Health Summit, Dr. Hamdani also reaches over 2 million followers across social media, regularly delivering educational content and speaking at major conferences. She has been featured in a TEDx talk on focus and in outlets like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.

THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND de Kelly Sundberg

Sundberg focuses on the longer-lasting effects of trauma and PTSD on survivors, challenging a culture in which violence against women is normalized and illuminating the nonlinear, complex nature of recovery. For readers of In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado and The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, this is a beautiful, devastating, and nuanced examination into embracing a new reality after trauma and finding power and beauty in it.

THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND
by Kelly Sundberg
Roxane Gay Books/Grove Atlantic, August 2025

The trauma of surviving an abusive marriage didn’t make Kelly Sundberg stronger. In fact, it nearly broke her. But leaving the abuse behind was not the end of the story, it was the beginning of a new one. In that journey, Sundberg learned in ways both good and bad, that one doesn’t necessarily get to leave abuse behind. Sometimes, everywhere you go, the memories of the abuse go with you.

THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND begins with the invocation “May this book be an exorcism.” Learning to coexist with her rage and then to turn that rage into strength, Sundberg’s journey to alchemizing her suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder into post-traumatic stress growth was neither easy nor simple. Far from bleak, her story provides vital insight into the little-known recovery process, and how healing is possible.

A narrative following a process of discovery as Sundberg’s personal story is juxtaposed against established research, The Answer is in the Wound offers a redemptive arc for trauma survivors, arguing for healing through an acceptance of their new state of being. Sundberg uses metaphors like the act of erasure—shown in erasure poetry created from her abusive ex-husband’s apologetic emails—and includes theories from psychiatrists and researchers like Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and Peter A. Levine to construct a balanced meditation on trauma and the imprint it leaves.

Kelly Sundberg is the author of Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival, published by Harper in 2018. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, Alaska Quarterly Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. Her essays have been published or selected as notables in Best American Essays four times. She has a PhD in creative nonfiction. She lives, writes, and edits in Columbus, Ohio.

MISBEHAVING AT THE CROSSROADS d’Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with this personal and thought-provoking work that explores the journeys and possibilities of Black women throughout American history and in contemporary times.

MISBEHAVING AT THE CROSSROADS: Essays & Writings
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Harper, June 2025
(via The Gernert Company)

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads.
Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression.

In MISBEHAVING AT THE CROSSROADS, Jeffers explores the emotional and historical tensions in Black women’s public lives and her own private life. She charts voyages of Black girlhood to womanhood and the currents buffeting these journeys, including the difficulties of racially gendered oppression, the challenges of documenting Black women’s ancestry; the adultification of Black girls; the irony of Black female respectability politics; the origins of Womanism/Black feminism; and resistance to White supremacy and patriarchy. As Jeffers shows with empathy and wisdom, naming difficult historical truths represents both Blues and transcendence, a crossroads that speaks.

Necessary and sharply observed, provocative and humane, and full of the insight and brilliance that has characterized her poetry and fiction, Misbehaving at the Crossroads illustrates the life of one extraordinary Black woman—and her extraordinary foremothers.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist. She is the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club Pick, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award, and five poetry collections, including the NAACP Image Award-winning The Age of Phillis, also nominated for the National Book Award. She teaches at the University of Oklahoma, where she holds the Paul and Carol Daube Sutton Chair in English.

ERFÜLLTER LEBEN MIT MINIMALISMUS d’Adina Markowz

From a full life to a fulfilled life – rethinking minimalism – self-awareness instead of renunciation.

ERFÜLLTER LEBEN MIT MINIMALISMUS
(Living the Fulfilled Life through Minimalism)
by Adina Markowz
Irisiana/PRH Germany, April 2025

Adina Markowz does not do with giving things up, but the only things she has are those that suit her life. To find out what really works for you and your life, the ‘Minimalism Muse’, as she calls herself, has created a 40-step program that can be implemented in everyday life.

The author does not advocate any kind of extremism: you don’t have to throw away, give away, or sell 90 percent of your possessions the very next day. Adina’s playful minimalism will lend you more energy, lightness, and clarity rather than the stresses of optimization, abstention, or a guilty conscience. She is more focused on the happy medium of less, with a deep self-knowledge and personal fulfillment – and the questions: What makes you happy? What do you need? And what is simply unnecessary ballast hindering you in your life?

Adina Markowz is known and loved on Instagram as the « Minimalism Muse ». As a coach, she helps people free themselves from material and mental baggage, thereby helping them find more joy, lightness, and energy.