Books
51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
“Dating is something every woman has to do, but it’s so much more fun to read about Kristen doing it, and living to tell about it so hilariously, than actually having to suffer through it yourself. Thank you, sister.”
Heather MacDonald
51 dates. 50 weeks. That was the social experiment Kristen McGuiness—single, living in LA, and entering her thirties newly sober—embarked upon. McGuiness thought facing her struggle with alcoholism would be the hardest part, with love coming easily afterwards. It didn’t. Rethinking her previous dating strategy, she embarks on the ultimate social experiment: 51 dates over the course of 50 weeks, and a chance to claim the life she thought was supposed to be hers. An LA Times bestseller, 51/50 was featured in Marie Claire and USA Today and on the TODAY Show and KTLA.
Live Through This: A Novel
“Sometimes the Zeitgeist burns from within. Kristen McGuiness's Live Through This reminds us that we begin again even when our lives blow up, even after loss, after grief, after failure, we might yet find the beacons of love, living, thriving. A triumph of heart and guts. A blaze.”
Lidia Yuknavitch
A modern suburban western set at the edge of 2016, Live Through This is at once a family drama and political saga about a woman who is forced to face her complicated grief in order to avenge her husband's death and her own life. Jane is a woman trying to reconcile the joyous mediocrity of middle-aged life. When tragedy strikes, she must fight for the dream she left behind, and against the systems that destroyed it. Featured on Zibby Owen’s Mom Don’t Have Time to Read and Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones.
And Other Publications
New York Times - Tiny Love Stories: Uncle Vic’s Hands (October 2024)
Literary Hub - On the Importance of the Small(ish) Book Publisher (March 2024)
Rolling Stone - Secret History of the Drug War: My Dad’s Life as a Drug Kingpin (August 2022)
Shondaland - Raven Leilani Captures the Complexities of Love (August 2020)
Elephant Journal - Why I Don’t Believe in “Mommy Martyrdom” (September 2019)
Medium - We Need to Talk About Zadie Smith (May 2019)
Scary Mommy - Sexual Assault Is Not Some Rite of Passage (October 2018)