Memoirs and biographies can surprise, amuse, or even inspire us in addition to giving us a glimpse into the remarkable lives of others. We’re in luck because there’s a terrific selection of new nonfiction books coming out this winter, including works by pop sensation Chiquis Rivera, actress Valerie Bertinelli, a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist, and the real-life account of writer V. C. Andrews. See what 2022 has to offer in terms of new biographies and memoirs below!
I Came All This Way to Meet You
Jami Attenberg
In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg—described as a “master of modern fiction” (Entertainment Weekly) and the “poet laureate of difficult families” (Kirkus Reviews)—reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one’s ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it? As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road.
Release Date: January 11, 2022
Lost & Found
Kathryn Schulz
Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s beloved father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the stories of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of how all our lives are shaped by loss and discovery—from the maddening disappearance of everyday objects to the sweeping devastations of war, pandemic, and natural disaster; from finding new planets to falling in love. Three very different American families form the heart of Lost & Found: the one that made Schulz’s father, a charming, brilliant, absentminded Jewish refugee and the one she herself makes through marriage.
Release Date: January 11, 2022
Admissions
Kendra James
Early on in Kendra James’ professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made—to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student only a few years earlier.
Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America’s inequitable system.
Release Date: January 18, 2022
This Will Be Funny Later
Jenny Pentland
Growing up, Jenny Pentland’s life was a literal sitcom. Many of the storylines for her mother’s smash hit series, Roseanne, were drawn from Pentland’s early family life in working-class Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Roseanne Barr’s success as a comedian catapulted the family from the Rockies to star-studded Hollywood—with its toxic culture of money, celebrity, and prying tabloids that was destabilizing for a child in grade school.
By adolescence, Jenny struggled with anxiety and eating issues.
Release Date: January 18, 2022
Enough Already
Valerie Bertinelli
Behind the curtain of her happy on-screen persona, Valerie Bertinelli’s life has been no easy ride, especially when it comes to her own self-image and self-worth.
She waged a war against herself for years, learning to equate her value to her appearance as a child star on One Day at a Time and punishing herself in order to fit into the unachievable Hollywood mold.
She struggled to make her marriage to Eddie Van Halen — the true love of her life — work, despite all the rifts the rock-star lifestyle created between them.
Release Date: January 18, 2022
Rise: My Story
Lindsey Vonn
A fixture in the American sports landscape for almost twenty years, Lindsey Vonn is a legend. With a career that spanned a transformation in how America recognizes and celebrates female athletes, Vonn—who retired in 2019 as the most decorated American skier of all time—was in the vanguard of that change, helping blaze a trail for other world-class female athletes and reimagining what it meant to pursue speed at all costs.
In Rise, Vonn shares her incredible journey for the first time, going behind the scenes of a badass life built around resilience and risk-taking.
Release Date: January 11, 2022
Chasing History
Carl Bernstein
In 1960, Bernstein was just a sixteen-year-old at considerable risk of failing to graduate high school. Inquisitive, self-taught—and, yes, truant—Bernstein landed a job as a copyboy at the Evening Star, the afternoon paper in Washington. By nineteen, he was a reporter there.
In Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, Bernstein recalls the origins of his storied journalistic career as he chronicles the Kennedy era, the swelling civil rights movement, and a slew of grisly crimes. He spins a buoyant, frenetic account of educating himself in what Bob Woodward describes as “the genius of perpetual engagement.”
Release Date: January 11, 2022
Star Child
Ibi Zoboi
From the New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist, a biography in verse and prose of science fiction visionary Octavia Butler, author of Parable of the Sower and Kindred.
Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight readers fifteen years after her death.
Release Date: January 25, 2022
The Woman Beyond the Attic
Andrew Neiderman
Best known for her internationally, multi-million-copy bestselling novel Flowers in the Attic, Cleo Virginia Andrews lived a fascinating life. Born to modest means, she came of age in the American South during the Great Depression and faced a series of increasingly challenging health issues. Yet, once she rose to international literary fame, she prided herself on her intense privacy. Now, The Woman Beyond the Attic aims to connect her personal life with the public novels for which she was famous. Based on Virginia’s own letters, and interviews with her dearest family members.
Release Date: February 1, 2022
Unstoppable
Chiquis Rivera
Bringing her signature warmth, humor, and positivity to the page, Chiquis Rivera picks up where her memoir Forgiveness left off.
Reeling from her mother’s tragic death, Chiquis finds herself at a major crossroads. As a new parent to her younger brother and sister, she struggles to balance her family’s needs with her dreams of becoming a successful singer and entrepreneur.
Stepping out of the shadow of her mother’s legendary career and finding her own identity as a singer is challenging…but navigating unhealthy relationships proves to be even harder.
Release Date: February 8, 2022