(Me, too.) Can you talk a little about the Planned Parenthood fundraiser you did leading up to launching this book and why you were inspired to do that?īP: I started going to Planned Parenthood when I was 16 and first sexually active. It’s a choice - one you can make without shame and hopefully, one day, without politics.ĮL: I know you’re a huge supporter of Planned Parenthood. I’m saying that it doesn’t ruin your life. I’m not trying to say that the experience doesn’t take processing, reflection, and care afterward. Genesis has an abortion at age 17 and then has to keep living her life. It’s that women you know and love have had abortions, and that doesn’t become the defining mark of their existence. Can you tell me how you came up with that genius idea?īP: It was always important to me to write a story about abortion that wasn’t solely about abortion.

You don’t hem and haw and have Genesis go, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” You don’t even entertain having her trapped in shame. As you know, because I don’t shut up about it, my favorite thing about this story is what you don’t do. To find out that it was chosen for the honor of ParnassusNext by the amazing Steph at Parnassus? Awesome.”ĮL: In addition to rocking this book launch and all the great coverage around it (being selected for ParnassusNext, being named to “Best Books of June” by iBooks, being chosen as Bustle’s American Women Book Club selection, and more) you are also rocking the hell out of the conversation around abortion. “It’s not my book, but there is something incomparably gratifying about watching a story in all its iterations - from that first inkling that this is something groundbreaking and beautiful, through edits, acquisition, cover reveal, and book release.

Laure is also an associate at FLM: “I read Aftercare Instructions in one breathless sitting,” Laure says. Pictured: Estelle Laure, Bonnie Pipkin, and Folio Literary Management’s Emily Van Beek, who is the agent for both. Fellow YA author Estelle Laure ( This Raging Light, But Then I Came Back)interviewed Pipkin about the soul of the book and its subject matter - a topic that’s often hard for people to talk about. The story centers on a girl named Genesis, who is abandoned by her boyfriend at a Planned Parenthood immediately following an abortion, and her ensuing journey of self-discovery. The ParnassusNext YA subscription box selection this month is Aftercare Instructions, the debut YA novel by Bonnie Pipkin.

Aftercare instructions bonnie pipkin