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Courtney Maum

@cbmaum

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I write + I help writers write.⚡️Author of 6 books incl. ALAN OPTS OUT🦞📚🐎 Newsletter-> bio✏️ Anti-AI
Founder @turningpoints_writers workshop in NM

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Update from the #ranchlife: no fun is being had at Turning Points 2026.

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It’s time to saddle up for our next Mental Wellness Book Club! 📚🐎

Looking for a way to prioritize your mental wellness, discover a great book, and connect with fellow military and veteran caregivers? Register before November 4th to join the Elizabeth Dole Foundation’s Mental Wellness Book Club!

Facilitated by our Mental Wellness Specialist Rebecca Mullaney, this quarterly book club offers caregivers a welcoming space to explore mental wellness through reading, reflection, and peer support. The book for next quarter is The Year of the Horses by Courtney Maum. 📖

Participation is limited to 20 caregivers, so don’t wait to register! We encourage participants to check their local library for a copy of the book. If it’s unavailable, EDF will mail you a copy.

🔗 Register today at the link in our bio.

Questions? Contact Rebecca Mullaney at rebecca@elizabethdolefoundation.org.

You dedicate so much time and care to others. This is an opportunity to invest in your own well-being, one page and one conversation at a time. 💙
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#hiddenheroes #bookclub

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Supremely bummed about the Catapult news, especially after seeing the Searing Fellowship cut for similarly maddening reasons.

Here are some of my favorite books from their catalog.

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Our second- and final- open mic of our 2026 retreat was as inspirational and touching as the first, capped off with a musical performance by our talented cohort members. Special congratulations to the writers who had never read their work in front of other people before! 🎤 ❤️

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Scenes from workshop. Today we’re focusing on what we can establish from a book or story’s very first paragraph, and we are slowly learning how to (ruthlessly) revise our own work.

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Yes, YOU can actually get *this close* to some of your favorite authors. 👀📚

And that’s just one of the many things that makes our annual *Celebrate Our Library* fundraiser so special.

There’s something extraordinary about being in an intimate setting with acclaimed authors, hearing the stories behind the stories, and sharing the experience with a room full of fellow book lovers. It’s personal, it’s inspiring, and it’s an evening you won’t find just anywhere.

Have you gotten your tickets yet?

Join us Thursday, November 5, at the @worcesterpubliclibrary for an unforgettable evening celebrating books, the craft of writing, and the library that brings our community together.

This year, we’re thrilled to welcome @pronounced_ing, @annabelmonaghan, and @jenngivhan!

Come for the authors. Stay for the conversation. Leave with a little more love for our library.

🎟️ Get your tickets now at the link in our bio.

📸 @unitymike & @erikasidor

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We’re off to New Mexico! Turning Points 2026 starts tomorrow! Safest travels to all our writers and program partners. We can’t wait to reunite!🌵 💜

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Can you tell I’ve been doing some book research while I’ve been on the couch healing?

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Nobody really warns you about the emotional crash that can come after publishing a book. You spend years writing it, dreaming about it, worrying about it…and then suddenly, it’s out in the world. Now what? 😳
With The Two Wills coming out in just a matter of DAYS (!!!), I’ve been thinking a lot about post-book-launch depression—and the strange emotional roller coaster of being an author.
One book I highly recommend is Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum @cbmaum , who talks candidly about this very thing. It’s a wonderful reality check for writers.
Have you ever experienced a little depression or emotional letdown after finishing a huge project or reaching a major milestone? Writers, artists, creatives—or anyone, really—I’d love to hear about it in the comments. ❤️
And give me a follow for more behind-the-scenes glimpses of the glamorous (ha!) life of a working novelist.
📚 The Two Wills arrives October 20!
#TheTwoWills #AuthorLife #WritingCommunity #Bookstagram #CreativeLife @blair.unleashed @alcovepress @atriabooks @sterlinglordlit

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Courtney Maum was a trend forecaster before she was a novelist, and she used those skills to write Touch.

It predicted people turning away from AI and smartphones and going back to dumb phones. It predicted falling birth rates. Plenty of it has come to pass since. At the time, it landed a bit early.

She says it’s the book she would write next, except it’s already written. Opting out, from a woman’s point of view.

Courtney is my guest talking about Alan Opts Out on Elena Meets the Author. Link in bio.

#podcast #books #authors #writingcommunity #bookstagram #courtneymaum #alanoptsout #touch #literaryfiction #satire #bookpodcast #authorsofinstagram #readersofinstagram #bookrecommendations #trendforecasting

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Here are my top 6 reads from the last 6 months.

💙 Into the Blue by @emma.c.brodie
📝 If Not You by @ellenoclover
💫 Under Story by @chloekbenjamin
🦞 Alan Opts Out by @cbmaum
🧴The Shampoo Effect by @jennyjacksonpineapple
🤍Dolly All the Time by @annabelmonaghan

👇🏻Tell me your favorite book you’ve read lately.

Thanks for the inspo @heystephwebb
@julesjoyofreading tag, you’re up next!

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My latest round of 2026 favorites!! Including some of the year’s Big Books and some that I’m not seeing mentioned here but are equally fantastic. (As always, despite being an insider, of sorts, I’m baffled by why some books crowd my feed and others don’t!)

This time around, I’m also including two novels I read months ago: Min Jin Lee’s American Hagwon (perhaps my favorite book of the year, or any year??) and Caitlin Shetterly’s marvelous The Gulf of Lions. Both still flood my mind every day. I’m mentioning them again because I initially posted well before they hit bookstores (as I perhaps too often do!!) but now that you can actually buy/borrow them for yourselves!

This round of favorites is heavy on coming of age novels. Perhaps because The Catcher in the Rye has been on my mind even more than usual thanks to its 75th anniversary. Perhaps because that 75th anniversary has led to a flood of DMs about My Salinger Year, which has led me to think about my own coming of age—both the way I rendered it in that book and the way I lived it!—and it’s put me in a strange place, thinking through all the (bad!!!) choices I made, and paths I didn’t take, and the ways in which at a certain point, one has to accept that it’s too late, certain doors have closed. (I don’t mean that in a bleak way, truly.)

But maybe that’s why coming of age takes perennially appeal to persons of all ages! (Not just in literature, of course. Sterling Point, anyone?) Because they bring us back to that point of possibility, when anything could happen: You could fall in love with the person standing next to you on the subway! Be plucked for stardom at the grocery store! Discover you’re the heir to a remote Canadian island!!

Two of the novels on this list—Gabrielle Korn’s Long Island Girls and Sarvat Hasin’s Strange Girls—so perfectly capture both that moment and its aftermath, through the lens of class and female friendship, I sobbed my way through them, electric with recognition!

Anyway, what are your favorite 2026 books? Tell me! And, as always, if you’re annoyed by an egregious absence, take a look at my earlier installments!! xoxox, J Bestselling writer Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year, the memoir on which the Margaret Qualley and Sigourney Weaver movie is based, stands in front of Victorian wallpaper, in a rainbow-striped cashmere sweater. Text reads “my favorite books of 2026. Part 4.”

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