Annabelle Gurwitch

In Conversation with Dave Barry

From the New York Times bestselling author of I See You Made an Effort comes a timely and hilarious chronicle of downward mobility, financial and emotional. With signature “sharp wit” (NPR), Annabelle Gurwitch gives irreverent and empathetic voice to a generation hurtling into their next chapter with no safety net and proving that our no-frills new normal doesn’t mean a deficit of humor.


In these essays, Gurwitch embraces homesharing, welcoming a housing-insecure young couple and a bunny rabbit into her home. The mother of a college student in recovery who sheds the gender binary, she relearns to parent, one pronoun at a time. She wades into the dating pool and flunks the magic of tidying up.


You’re Leaving When? is for anybody who thought they had a semblance of security but wound up with a fragile economy and a blankie. Gurwitch offers stories of resilience, adaptability, low-rent redemption, and the kindness of
strangers. Even in a Zoom.


Annabelle Gurwitch is the author of I See You Made an Effort (a New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist); Wherever You Go, There They Are; You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up (coauthored with Jeff Kahn); and Fired! (also a Showtime Comedy Special). She's written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Magazine, and was a regular contributor to NPR. The longtime cohost of Dinner & a Movie, she performs with the Moth Mainstage and at arts centers around the country. She lives with her child—a college graduate of the COVID class of 2020—a cat, and an assortment of tenants and their comfort animals in Los Angeles.


Presented in partnership with the National JCC Literary Consortium