What a delight! My next book of nonfiction, Frivolity: A Defense, now has a lovely cover. And it goes so well with the cover of the last book I wrote for the No Limits Series, Taste: A Book of Small Bites. Both covers are a bit dotty. Both have a feeling of lightness and joy.

Because Frivolity is part of a series, all the book covers share a similar aesthetic. But Columbia University Press still asked me if I had any preferences about the design. I told them that I wanted the cover to be unapologetically pink, that it should feel perky, queer, girly, and (of course) frivolous.

Whenever I see the cover for my next book, that’s the moment in which the book begins to feel real. Really real. At least, that has always been my experience. Up until that point, the book is an abstract thing, a disembodied object that exists in the writer’s mind and on the computer screen. But the cover is the beginning of the book’s embodiment, its existence out in the real world. It’s a moment of fear and excitement, nervousness and anticipation. I always dread it and love it too. And so much of a book’s birthing is like this: a pairing of contradictory emotions, which the writer must learn to accept and endure.

If you’re interested in pre-ordering a copy, you can buy Frivolity here.