On My New Book & Writing Sad Stuff

My second book, THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND comes out from Roxane Gay Books on August 26, 2025, and I couldn’t be more excited, but I’m also a bit surprised by how vulnerable it feels to have early copies of this book in the world. The Answer in the Wound is an essay collection that’s basically my version of a fuck you to the question, “Why don’t you just get over it?”

I never know how to answer that question. Why don’t I just get over nearly a decade of domestic abuse? The most honest answer is this: I’ve tried. I’m trying.

While I was at the AWP conference in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, I spoke with Roxane before her keynote address, and I told her that this book feels more vulnerable than my last book did. She said that she understands—that my last book was a story about something that happened to me, but this current book is a story about my feelings. To be completely honest, it was easier to write GOODBYE, SWEET GIRL. All I had to do was faithfully tell the story of my experience. I was plotting a narrative, taking the reader from point A to point B. The Answer is in the Wound is different. The Answer is in the Wound gives the reader a window into my damaged self, my fractured psyche, my longings, my fears, my rage. The view through this window isn’t alway pretty, but my hope is that, in seeing it, readers will not only have a better understanding of what it takes to recover from abuse, but that they will feel seen in all of their beautiful damage too.

Grove Atlantic sent me a few advance copies of my book, so I gave one to my husband, Rich, to read. When he was in the middle of it, I asked if he liked it, which was such a dumb question to ask my husband. Rich is a scientist, not a writer, so he’s not always the most articulate. This time, he simply said, "I like it." But then his eyes got watery, and he said, "It's sad though. It's hard to know how sad you were." I could hear his voice dip in that specific way that it does, and if one of us cries, we both cry (we’re a crying family), so I changed the subject.

At AWP, I had lunch with a friend who had read an advance copy. When she received it, I warned her that it was a dark book. I knew she’d know this, but I wanted her to be prepared. At lunch, she said that it was dark, but she compared it to driving around a really long corner where you think you're never going to see the vista, but then you round the corner, and suddenly, the beautiful view is right there. (I hope I didn’t paraphrase badly.) While she’d been reading the book, she’d texted me that it was “heavy the way a chocolate cake with bitter cocoa buttercream is heavy. Only sharp in a way that makes the pleasure more complex and increases the depth of the experience.”

Rich finished the book on Thursday. He said, "Your friend is right. It's sad, and it feels like that will never end, but then there’s this sudden pivot, and it ends on a happy note." I wasn’t trying to tack on a happy ending to a sad book in order to make it more palatable to readers. These days, I just am very happy. I may never “get over” what happened to me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a life that is full of joy and meaning and love.

The other day, Rich and I were trying to take a nap, and he said, "I liked how, in that one essay, you wrote that [after a nightmare], you put your arm around me, and my heartbeat calmed you down.” He wrapped his arm around me and said, “I liked that because, when I wake up in the middle of the night, and I snuggle up to you, your heartbeat does that for me too."

I remembered when I dated a man who wouldn’t read my writing because he “didn’t want to feel sad.” I could never be myself with that man. Rich isn’t scared of my sadness. He sees my damage, but he doesn’t think I’m broken. He doesn’t ask me to “just get over” anything. He sits with my sadness. He lets me write about it. He lets me write about him. Never has anyone in my life seen me the way that he sees me.

In this journey of recovery, of trying to “get over it,” the truest lesson that I have learned is that we should only surround ourselves with people who see us as we are—in all of our complexity, damage, and beauty—and who love us for who we are rather than in spite of it.

If you, too, are struggling to get over something, then I hope this book liberates you. If you have a loved one who is struggling to get over something, then I hope this book educates you. And if you like weird books that aren’t easily categorizable, then I hope this book scratches that itch for you. Whoever you are, I hope you take the time to read this book because I wrote it for you. All of you.

The Answer is in the Wound can be preordered anywhere that books are available, and preorders are the absolute number one way to support writers. I mean, hey, you can preorder it, and you don’t even have to read it (because I’ll never know), but I’d still appreciate the preorder! I will update this page with events as I know more.

I have been gobsmacked by the early praise* the book is receiving from some of my very favorite writers. I mean, truly gobsmacked. Thank you Hanif, Kimberly, Maggie (I feel like I stole the word “gobsmacked” from you), Lori, Lilly, Megan, and Sarah. Thank you for taking the time to sit with my sadness. Thank you for your words, and your generosity, and your kindness.

And to my Substack readers, new and old, thank you for being here. Always

Xo,

Kelly

*The praise is below. Thank you for reading.

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“The Answer Is in the Wound is a powerful, formally inventive book. Gratitude to Kelly Sundberg for such a tender and nuanced window into an arc of healing, of reevaluating the individual pieces of a self in an attempt to become whole again.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Times bestselling author of There’s Always This Year and A Little Devil in America

“In this incandescent excavation of trauma and transformation, Kelly Sundberg beautifully braids scholarly insight and emotional truth to create a work of profound intricacy and grace. Warm, wise, and wildly insightful, The Answer Is in the Wound is both an intellectual exploration and a deeply human chronicle of survival, class, motherhood, magic, friendship, and independence.”—Kimberly King Parsons, National Book Award-nominated author of Black Light and We Were the Universe

“In The Answer Is in the Wound, Kelly Sundberg explores what it means to be alchemized by trauma into something, and someone, new. With goosebump-raising erasures from her abusive ex-husband’s emails, an essay entirely in couplets, and correspondence with law enforcement, this innovative collection is at once lyrical and brutal, intimate and culturally relevant. I’ve never read anything like it.”—Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

“The Answer Is in the Wound candidly depicts the resilience and creativity it takes to thrive after trauma and shows us how to find our way along the road to healing. Kelly Sundberg has given us a beautiful, necessary book.”—Lori Gottlieb, bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and New York Times "Ask The Therapist" columnist

“The Answer Is in the Wound upends, subverts, and refracts the trauma narrative. Sundberg describes the ways she has been harmed—by her abusive ex-husband, the system that enabled him, her own parents—but refuses to fit herself tidily into the role of 'victim.' She writes of healing, without claiming to have healed. She wields her anger without apology, and moves through the story with an armor made of silk: both strong and delicate. This book will be a balm for anyone navigating the fragmented, circuitous experience of building a new life after trauma.” —Lilly Dancyger, author of First Love

“Healing is no linear thing. It's fragmentary. It warps time, the gutpunch of past trauma following us across miles, across decades. In this stunning collection of linked lyric essays, Kelly Sundberg captures this truth in form as well as subject, giving voice to the complexity of survival—its beauty and destruction. This book is a gift.”—Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life

“Kelly Sundberg’s meditative and profound collection ventures deep into the woods of her psyche to recover the broken pieces of herself after escaping abuse. Doing so, she traces the reverberations of her trauma, like the ripples outward from a stone dropped into a mountain lake, through her life and relationships. I felt the healing magic of her writing on every page of this lyrical, generous book.”—Sarah Gerard, author of Sunshine State and Carrie Carolyn Coco