12 New Memoirs to Read This Spring

Harry Bliss is a fantastic cartoonist who’s designed dozens of covers for The New Yorker and illustrated books written by everyone from Kate DiCamillo to Steve Martin. In You Can Never Die, Bliss is not just the illustrator but also the wordsmith. Here he reflects on his life and his relationship with his beloved dog, Penny. This graphic memoir is both a heartwarming story about the joys of pet companionship and a moving portrait of grief in the wake of Penny’s passing. It’s also an interesting chronicle of Bliss’s life, including his early years in Philadelphia, his time at art school, and his evolution into the renowned illustrator he is today. 

Publication date: April 29, 2025

Celebrated author and essayist Jennifer Finney Boylan has written multiple books, including Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs and the national bestseller She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders. This year, she returns with another powerful work of cultural critique and personal examination. Cleavage movingly explores the divide and commonalities between genders, using Boylan’s own experiences as a transgender woman to further illuminate the space between the binary. "For those who have never felt at home at home ― and that’s a lot of us these days ― Jennifer Finney Boylan’s story is a story of faith, hope, and, above all, love” (Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street).

Publication date: February 4, 2025 

Be honest: Have you been a bad friend before? Of course — we all have! In Bad Friend, Tiffany Watt Smith delivers a lively memoir-meets-cultural-critique about the pleasures, complexities, and strengths of female friendship. The author and cultural critic interweaves her own experiences into her thought-provoking exploration of women’s relationships through the centuries, highlighting how the relatably messy friendships from her personal life stand in stark contrast to the impossible cultural expectations of girl power and BFFs. Full of insight and wit, Bad Friend is a rousing celebration of the bonds that women share — from the good to the bad and everything in between.       

Publication date: May 6, 2025

Besha Rodell is an Australian-born writer who moved to the United States as a teen and worked her way up from a job as a server in the food industry to one of the coolest gigs we can imagine — a restaurant critic. The food writer’s new narrative is filled with delectable stories of her culinary adventures, from dining in restaurants in Atlanta and sun-dappled Los Angeles to indulging in delicious meals around the world. Rodell’s writing is lively and candid; she never shies away from the hardships she’s experienced. Ultimately, however, Hunger Like a Thirst is a fun, joyful food memoir that celebrates the zest of life. 

Publication date: May 13, 2025

It’s impossible to overstate Bill Gates’s impact on the world, which makes a new memoir with his name on it a no-brainer. Source Code — already a New York Times bestseller — is a frank and engaging look at the inner workings and personal life of the larger-than-life public figure. The memoir covers the tech mogul’s formative years, including Gates’s familial relationships and struggles to fit in, the death of a childhood friend, and, of course, his discovery of the power of computers.  

Publication date: February 4, 2025

Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia has already received praise from major media outlets, including Time and The Los Angeles Times, but we want to reiterate how special her book is. There’s so much that book lovers will adore here. Chihaya, a renowned essayist, editor, and book critic, tells her story through references to the books that have shaped her life and deepened her perspective. She covers tough life experiences — such as growing up as a Japanese American in a mostly white Cleveland suburb and a hospital stay because of a nervous breakdown — with honesty and wisdom. She also revels in the transformative power of literature, demonstrating how books have the potential to nourish our identities and reshape who we are. 

Publication date: February 4, 2025

Shattered was written in 2022, when Hanif Kureishi suffered a fall in Rome and found himself holed up in a hospital, unable to walk or even care for himself. This hospital confinement led Kureishi to take to the page, which is something the author and playwright clearly knows how to do. But Shattered is more than just a book about the author’s accident and subsequent dealings with the Italian medical system. It’s also a nuanced meditation on parenthood, sex, immigration, and more. Kureishi, who could not physically write while in the hospital, dictated his narrative to family members — showing how a true writer will find any way to get their story told, even when they can’t type or hold a pen.

Publication date: February 4, 2025 

In Deep House, Jeremy Atherton Lin presents the love story of two people that the world and the law do not want to be together. The author, known for the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Gay Bar, is a masterful writer, but what makes this memoir a must is the love story at its heart. Lin, an American, met the British man of his dreams in 1996, just as the Defense of Marriage Act was being prepared. This law banned marriage rights for same-sex couples, including immigration for foreign partners of queer people. Despite the tough situation, the book is filled with humor and a host of quirky characters and fun settings, including sex clubs, back alleys, and fashion shows.

Publication date: June 3, 2025

Geoff Dyer’s Homework has been named a most-anticipated book by Vulture, The Guardian, The Observer, and many other publications, so we’re definitely not alone in our excitement. The memoir focuses on Dyer’s formative years in 1960s and 1970s England as the only child in a working-class family still reeling from WWII. It follows Dyer through his school days, tracing his early successes in the classroom and transformative experiences on the way to university to illustrate the life-changing, barrier-breaking potential of a quality education. 

Publication date: June 10, 2025

In This Is Your Mother, Erika J. Simpson beautifully explores the mother–daughter relationship. The upcoming memoir focuses on issues such as poverty, separation, illness, and loss, and it integrates both biblical and pop culture references to investigate Simpson’s complex connection to her mother, Sallie. At its heart, this is a story of a mother told through her daughter’s eyes, tracing Sallie’s upbringing in a traditional family and her fight to make her own way. 

Publication date: May 6, 2025

How to Lose Your Mother is another striking book about a mother–daughter relationship. Molly Jong Fast uses both humor and tenderness to tell her story of growing up as the daughter of a famous mother — writer Erica Jong,  who wrote the iconic book Fear of Flying and was a key figure in the second wave of feminism. How to Lose Your Mother covers Jong Fast’s desire for more from her mother, who always seemed slightly out of reach, as well as the general chaos of growing up with a parent hungry for attention. It also covers Jong’s final years with dementia, which coincided with Jong Fast’s husband’s cancer diagnosis. 

Publication date: June 3, 2025

The Place of Tides is a touching new memoir by James Rebanks, author of Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey and The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches From an Ancient Landscape. The book, which hit shelves in England last year and is set for release in the States this June, is about a summer Rebanks spent on a Norwegian island many years ago, where his only companion was an elderly woman. Unable to stop thinking about this woman over the years, Rebanks wrote her a letter asking to visit, and it turned into a life-changing experience. The summer allowed Rebanks to visit the woman during her last season of work collecting eiderdown from birds, leaving him with deep lessons about self-knowledge, forgiveness, and more. 

Publication date: June 24, 2025