Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley’s memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend. A Best Book of the Year, as named by Vogue, TIME, The Washington Post, Esquire, NPR, Elle, LitHub, Oprah Daily, Publishers Weekly, The Independent, New Statesman, and more, now out in paperback. 

How do we live without the ones we love? After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Sloane Crosley looks for answers in philosophy and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.

For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, Sloane’s apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place.

When Russell dies exactly one month later, his death propels Sloane on a wild quest to right the unrightable, to explore what constitutes family and possession as the city itself faces the staggering toll of the pandemic.

Sloane Crosley’s search for truth is frank, wickedly funny, and gilded with resounding empathy. Upending the “grief memoir,” Grief Is for People is a story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it. A contemporary elegy, it rises to console and challenge our notions of mourning during these grief-stricken times.

"Impeccably crafted, this book pushes an already feted writer into potent new territory." —Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian

"Grief Is for People is a moving and much-needed tribute to this vital but often unsung human relationship. . . Crosley's book is a roaring success." —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor). She is also the author of Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the novels, Cult Classic and The Clasp. Her work has been translated into ten languages. She has been featured in The Library of America's 50 Funniest American Writers, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best American Travel Writing, Phillip Lopate’s The Contemporary American Essay and others. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, her work has appeared in various publications including the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue and The Guardian. She has been an adjunct professor in Columbia University’s MFA program and a guest teacher at Dartmouth College and The Yale Writers’ Workshop. She lives in New York City.