THREE QUESTIONS WITH NICOLE HAROUTUNIAN

Host of "Story Time" for Caregivers at Astoria Bookshop

What I love about book publicity is that it gives me a wider view of community efforts to celebrate books, writing, and togetherness too!

The brilliant writer Erica Stern, author of Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story (coming in June, order you copy—the tension alone, the folklore, the intensity, the true bridge between memoir and fiction, it’s so good), mentioned Nicole Haroutunian’s remarkably good idea “Story Time” for Caregivers as an option for her to celebrate the memoir.

And once I was introduced to the concept and the work Haroutunian’s been doing, I wanted to share about it more widely (maybe it’ll inspire you to start your own!). As a mother to small children, I am desperate for spaces like this one that allow me to be myself, but also bring my kids without the burden of wondering if they’re tiny nuisances. I’m a firm believer in children are learning to self-regulate and so I can’t get down with the folks who are like “children should behave in all public places!”—do adults behave in public? But sometimes you just get sick of the facial reactions. (Signed, a mom whose kid regularly pees on trees). So, without further ranting, here is THREE QUESTIONS WITH NICOLE HAROUTUNIAN about “Story Time” for Caregivers!

---

What sparked the idea for "Story Time" for Caregivers, and how has it developed since your initial idea?

When my daughter was a baby, I would take her to every story time within walking distance of our apartment. I stayed home with her for her first eighteen months, so I really craved the brief respite of camaraderie and adult conversation that accompanied story time. We used to joke, is this for us (the adults) or them (the babies)? When my novel-in-stories Choose This Now came out, and I started contacting bookstores to schedule events, I was thinking back to those story times. My baby loved seeing new faces, hearing interesting voices, and kicking around the ground, but when she was very small, it didn’t really matter whose faces or what words or which ground. Since my book takes on themes of pregnancy, new parenthood, and friendships between women, often across the chasm of motherhood, I had the idea to hold a story time where we just acknowledged that it was more for the adults than the for the babies. It was the premise rather than the unspoken truth. Because the content of my book was relevant to the story time crowd, it seemed like it could be a natural fit. More than that, it can be really hard to get out of the house in the evening when you’re a parent of young kids. So many readings start at 7pm, which is right in the middle of many people’s bedtime routines. And sometimes people have childcare during the day but find it hard to line up more childcare for the evening. These logistical issues shut out a lot of parents from evening literary events. I thought a morning story time could solve a lot of problems all at once.

I reached out to a fair amount of bookstores with this idea, “Story Time” for Caregivers, before getting some traction. The first event I did was in San Francisco at the incredible Black Bird Bookstore and Cafe. I live in Queens in New York City but was heading to the Bay Area for a few days and this amazing network of writer moms that I’m plugged into there hooked me up with the store, as well as Recess, a collective that works to mitigate loneliness in new parents. Then, the very insightful writer and podcaster Kaitlin Solimine signed on to do it with me and record it for her podcast, Postpartum Productions. The folks at the store were so welcoming and excited to host us. Kaitlin and I were really moved when we looked up during our conversation to see a nursing mother listening to every word—we were like, it’s working! (You can listen here!)

Back at home, I got in touch with the very generous Emily Giglierano at my local store, Astoria Bookshop. Emily, mom to a toddler herself, loved the idea. We held the first story time there in their back garden with me reading from my book, and it went so well–a really engaged audience, babies drooling, moms sharing their experiences, people swapping phone numbers—that Emily invited me to help her launch it as a monthly series at the store. We’ve been going for about a year now with the absolute best line up of readers and audience.

How is "Story Time" for Caregivers different from a traditional book club, and how have you seen it benefit both writers and caregivers?

I never really thought of it in relation to a book club, but the format of the events is a little like a cross between a reading, a book club, a group therapy session, and playtime! One big difference is most of these new parents don’t have the bandwidth to be reading full books in their day-to-day, which doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy hearing and discussing snippets of them. My day job is in museum education, so I am used to facilitating conversations. Usually we have the reader share some of their work, then we talk, they share some more, then we talk some more, and then the reader closes with a baby book. That part can be really fun if the reader’s kids are older, and they get to revisit a board book that had been a favorite. For the writers, especially those who are sharing work about parenting, whether it is fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction, it can be so special to see and hear the reactions of their target audience in real time–an audience who they might not generally be able to access in person. This month, my friend Julia LoFaso was one of our readers, and she shared a poem she wrote about her daughter, who is now nine, back when she was six months old. A mom in the audience, still kind of stunned by motherhood, was cradling her six month old, and was like, “You literally wrote that for me.” It was an incredible moment.

Perhaps another difference between “Story Time” and a more traditional book club or reading is that we invite featured readers who have new books (like Shayne Terry coming up in May with her new book, Leave: A Postpartum Account), older books (like Christine Kandic Torres coming up in April, whose book The Girls in Queens came out in 2022), and yet-to-be-published books, too. The bookstore is really chill about whether they’re selling tons of books during the event or not (although usually they do sell some). They’re in it for the community-building.

This idea feels transformative to me, and like an idea where literature feels truly communal and like a bridge for the isolation of caregiving (I have felt as a mother of two small children within writing and reading spaces)--how do you envision this space for writers, readers, and caregivers, and how has it surprised you?

Because we spend so much of each session talking to each other and sharing, we get to know the people who come to the events. Two of the dedicated moms who come to the readings shared with us that they’re aspiring writers. After a few months, Emily and I thought–what if we invited them to be readers? So they were our featured readers this February and March! It was the first time each of them had read from their manuscripts in front of an audience and it was really meaningful to them. They were in a truly supportive environment–we were all so genuinely excited to hear what they’ve been working on—and their kids were there, seeing modeled in front of them from an extremely young age that their moms are these talented, dedicated writers. We’ve had multiple readers bring their own kids along and share their work while nursing fussy toddlers. Babies will spontaneously applaud during poems or join in, vocalizing along with the reader. We often sit on the ground and either Emily or I will chase escaping toddlers so their caregivers can stay in the moment with the reader. Often, writer-parents, especially writer-mothers, don’t get to be both at once, and neither do mother-readers. With “Story Time,” we’re meeting people where they are, with their little ones in tow, but not forgetting that this series is for them.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, there’s no reason you can’t start your own “Story Time” for Caregivers where you are! It can be tricky to recruit an audience because folks age out so quickly–we all know how short parental leave can be! We post on local parent groups and I know the bookstore shares the information about it with anyone who comes into the store with a baby. It’s worth the effort.

---

Nicole Haroutunian is the author of the novel-in-stories Choose This Now (Noemi Press, 2024), which was named one of the best story collections of the year by Electric Literature, and the story collection Speed Dreaming (Little a, 2015). Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Story, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She works in museum education and lives with her family in Woodside, Queens in New York City.