How We Live Now

A book for this moment by a beloved author, timely and timeless: In the tradition of his acclaimed Insomniac City (an Amazon "Best Biographies and Memoirs" of 2017 and a B&N Discover pick) Bill's ability to see our shared humanity feels so necessary right now. The quick turnaround ensures this book will capture hearts in the moment of the pandemic, but also last as an enduring and beautiful tribute to human connection.Blurbs, tweets, and attention: Expect an essay from Bill in the NYT Sunday Review around publication and support from Brain Pickings, the New Yorker, etc, as well as blurbs and tweets from Rebecca Solnit, Anne Lamott, Roz Chast, Fran Liebowitz, and many others. The response to Bill's piece "Before the Bookstores Closed" on LitHub (https://lithub.com/walkinginthecitybeforethebookstores-closed/) was phenomenal.Bill Hayes's profile is only growing: He recently completed the screenplay for a film adaptation of Insomniac City, currently in the works from Hopscotch Features, and he was prominently featured in Ric Burns's recent documentary about Oliver Sacks.Bill Hayes is the author of Insomniac City and The Anatomist, among other books, and a forthcoming history of exercise, Sweat, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2021. Hayes is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. A collection of his street photography, How New York Breaks Your Heart, was published recently by Bloomsbury. Hayes has completed the screenplay for a film adaptation of Insomniac City, currently in the works from Hopscotch Features, and he is also a co-editor of Oliver Sacks's posthumous books. He lives in New York. Visit his website at billhayes.com'Bill Hayes has unwrapped a New York under wraps during the lockdown. He is the great poet of the everyday' Edmund White 'Even at a moment when we were all supposed to withdraw from each other, How We Live Now reaches out' Rebecca Solnit From the beloved author of Insomniac City, a poignant and profound tribute in stories and images to a city amidst a pandemic A bookstore where readers shout their orders from the street. A neighborhood restaurant turned to-go place where one has a shared drink-on either end of a bar-with the owner. These scenes, among many others, became the new normal as soon as the world began to face the COVID-19 pandemic. In How We Live Now, author and photographer Bill Hayes offers an ode to our shared humanity-capturing in real time this strange new world we're now in (for who knows how long?) with his signature insight and grace. As he wanders the increasingly empty streets of Manhattan, Hayes meets fellow New Yorkers and discovers stories to tell, but he also shares the unexpected moments of gratitude he finds from within his apartment, where he lives alone and--like everyone else--is staying home, trying to keep busy and not bored as he adjusts to enforced solitude with reading, cooking, reconnecting with loved ones, reflecting on the past--and writing. Featuring Hayes's inimitable street photographs, How We Live Now chronicles an unimaginable moment in time, offering a long-lasting reminder that what will gets us through this unprecedented, deadly crisis is each other.From the beloved author of Insomniac City, a poignant and profound tribute in stories and images to a city amidst a pandemic.Bill Hayes has unwrapped a New York under wraps during the lockdown. He is, in his photos and writings, the great poet of the everyday.A touching volume . . . The photos serve as potent documentation of an unprecedented time.This is a love story - for one particular man in the love affair that began as the pandemic did, for the city of New York and its people coping with an unanticipated catastrophe, for what words can do, for the light and darkness, shade and illumination of black-and-white street photography, for wandering and encountering and seeing, for being truly a citizen of the city and an inhabitant of the streets. Even at a moment when we were all supposed to withdraw from each other How We Live Now reaches out[A] loving tribute to Sacks and to New York . . . Frank, beautiful, bewitching-[Hayes's photographs] unmask their subjects' best and truest selves.Poetic and profound . . . A lyrical reminder that happiness and heartache are inseparably entwined . . . Insomniac City is an ineffably splendid read in its entirety, a mighty packet of pure aliveness.Like Patti Smith's haunting M Train, Hayes' book weaves seemingly disparate threads of memory into a kind of sanctuary . . . where one can shake off the treasured relics of past lives and prepare to be reborn anew.Insomniac City is resoundingly about life--about being wide awake to possibility, to the beauty of every fleeting moment.