About onewomanparty by Rebecca Handler

After college, I got a job cold-calling for an anti-hunger organization. I logged the calls on a legal pad that I filled with comments like, “Talked about his brother. Had an accent.” and “Works at a medical clinic. Could hear children in the background.” No one asked me to keep track of these details. On the contrary, I was discouraged from doing so. But I couldn’t stop. The strangers were telling me such interesting things.

I started onewomanparty when I moved from San Francisco to Perth in 2015. It started off, as most personal blogs do, as, “Hey I’m going through this thing and if I don’t write about it, I’ll burst.” I wrote about the grandeur and peculiarities of Western Australia, and the challenges of moving children across the world. Writing became the way I made sense of things, and the difference between a good day and a lost one.

As I became more at home in Australia, and bumped up against the restrictions of chronicling real life, I turned to fiction. By the time I returned to San Francisco in 2018, I was hooked.

Edie Richter is Not Alone (Unnamed Press, 2021) is a novel about an idiosyncratic woman who makes a problematic decision. It is a story of aftermath, memory, and secrets. I have been delighted by the book’s success, including a starred review in Kirkus to being longlisted by the Center for New Fiction.

One month before the publication of my first novel, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. If you found your way here via the club you never wanted to join, please know you are not alone. On my blog, you can read about my experiences with cancer, including the taste of chemotherapy.

I am writing my second novel. It is about a woman who begins to believe that her life could be a play, complete with an audience watching.

If you have read all of this, you probably like stories too. Thank you.