What is the title of your latest release?
DON’T STOP
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
DON’T STOP is about a brilliant scholar whose sexual obsession threatens to unravel her carefully built life.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I wanted to capture the party atmosphere of New York during the dot-com madness of the year 2000. There was a feeling that the old rules of reality no longer applied. Nobody wanted to miss out. I wanted to capture that.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Unfortunately, yes.
What are three words that describe your hero?
There are two heroes. One is feral, dark, and idiosyncratic. The other is responsible, strong, and also idiosyncratic.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Certain sexual practices seem degrading to some people but not to others.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit all the time. The sentences reveal things to me and I must respond.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
The cacio e pepe at Misirizzi off the Bowery.
Describe your writing space/office!
I write on a tiny white Ikea desk with a giant 20-pound Maine coon cat often on my lap, and marble notebooks and journals strewn all around.
Who is an author you admire?
E. M. Forster. I read A ROOM WITH A VIEW every summer. I’ve found that it’s impossible to read it and not be happy.
Is there a book that changed your life?
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard, taught me what great essays can do.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was at home in Texas in April when I opened an email saying an editor wanted to buy the book for Europa. I played Laura Branigan’s early 80s disco song “Gloria” over and over again, dancing around the kitchen. I danced for three days straight, with breaks for sleeping and eating. I can still close my eyes and see that glitter ball she dances under.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love books by women that take care with language and make you want to write your own realizations in the margins. Is that a genre? I also hope I wrote a book like that.
What’s your favorite movie?
Now, Voyager.
What is your favorite season?
Early summer, when the polynoses are tumbling out of the maple trees.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Without any plans for the whole day except phone conversations with my best friend, and then supper with my husband in the evening.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I am ashamed to say that I am addicted to the remake of All Creatures Great and Small. I particularly love Gaia Wise as Charlotte, the posh girlfriend of witty vet Tristan.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
French bistro.
What do you do when you have free time?
I call my friend Jane to see if I can induce her to take a walk.
What can readers expect from you next?
I’d love to write about the hoarder who lived in the next building over when I was on Schermerhorn Street. She was such a nice and squirrely lady, very well groomed, with piles of tidy newspapers to the ceiling. What if she had to step out into the world again, after her a loss, say? I want to write about those fresh, sharp perceptions one gets when one steps out into life again.
DON’T STOP by Bonnie Friedman
A luminous, erotically charged novel about ambition, desire, and the dangerous pursuit of self-knowledge.
Ina is a 41-year-old literary scholar on the cusp of professional success. With a coveted university job, a kind husband, and a book on Eugene O’Neill due in months, her life appears enviably stable. But when an impulsive kiss with a stranger shatters her self-control, Ina finds herself plunged into an erotic and emotional freefall.
She tells herself it’s research—a brief detour before returning to real life. But what begins as a flirtation becomes a reckoning with everything Ina thought she wanted: marriage, intellect, control. As she navigates the ecstatic confusion of newfound desire, she risks upending her work, her relationship, and her understanding of who she is.
Set in Brooklyn and Manhattan at the turn of the millennium, Don’t Stop is a bold, immersive debut that explores what happens when a woman dares to want more—of the world, of her body, of herself. Bonnie Friedman delivers a novel of transgression, transformation, and unapologetic longing.
Women’s Fiction | Fiction Literary [ Europa Editions, On Sale: April 21, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9798889661740 / eISBN: 9798889661757 ]
Buy DON’T STOP: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Bonnie Friedman
Bonnie Friedman is the author of the bestselling, widely anthologized Writing Past Dark: Envy, Fear, Distraction, and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life. She is also the author of the memoirs The Thief of Happiness: The Story of an Extraordinary Psychotherapy and Surrendering Oz.
Her essays have been selected for inclusion in The Best Writing on Writing, The Best American Movie Writing, The Best Buddhist Writing, and The Best Spiritual Writing. Her first novel, Don’t Stop, will be published by Europa Editions on April 21, 2026.
No Comments
Comments are closed.