What a Book Launch Taught Me About Community

Writing is quiet work. For months it is only you, a page and a story that is still finding its shape. It is easy to forget that the words are meant for anyone else.

Then the day comes when the book is in other people's hands. They hold it up, they turn to a page, and they tell you which story sounded like their own. In that moment the book stops belonging to the writer.

What stayed with me was not the event itself but the conversations afterwards. Strangers became friends because they had read the same page and felt the same thing.

A book is finished by its readers. I am grateful for every one of them.