An innocent phone call from his mother's doctor exposes a decades-old family secret--Al Isaacs was a gray-market #adoptee, the truth hidden behind false paperwork & decades of silence. His #memoir takes readers on an unforgettable search for the woman who gave him life. (Feb 2026) #LateDiscovery

Here’s the promo image and details on adoptee-centered events I mentioned in an earlier post, the weekend of September 11!

It's a great time to check out our selection of books for #adoptees bookshop.org/shop/adoptee...

Canadian #adoptee Brenda Laface has written a #memoir told in two voices: Rose, the woman living through it, and Brenda, the woman who trained in Jungian psychology, Liberal Arts, and the philosophy of the human interior, who steps in to illuminate what Rose could not yet understand. (May 2025)

The latest novel from #adoptee author Dan Chaon is a playfully macabre and utterly thrilling tale about orphaned twins on the run from their murderous uncle who find refuge in a bizarre traveling carnival. (Sept 2025) #fiction

Read a new excerpt from Lee Langvad's novel MY INTERPRETER, translated from Danish by Hazel Evans. An adoptee narrator who lives in Denmark goes for a meal at her biological family's home in South Korea. During the visit, an interpreter must translate between her and her parents.

Thanks Amy Roost and @hippocampusmag.bsky.social for this deeply thoughtful review of Relative Strangers. www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2026/06/revi...

NEW! In this #memoir, Baby Scoop Era #adoptee Heather Massey describes her experience growing up as a geek in an adoptive family of normies who later in life reunites with her first mother & discovers her grandmother’s role in her #adoption.

"I wasn’t just writing about the dead, or my adoption, I was writing myself back to life, until eventually, I arrived at a new life, unimaginable before I fell ill. Writing became ceremony." #adoptees #AdopteeVoices www.rewritingadoption.com/blog/adoptin...

Hello again, adoptee readers! This post explains why our website was inaccessible for several months. Adoptee Reading is now back online & ready to continue helping adopted people discover #adoption literature from the #adoptee perspective. adopteereading.com/2026/06/01/a...

NEW! Paige Towers interrogates the legacy of the Holt Adoption Program in Korea via the investigation of an adoptive father who murdered his children. #adoption #adoptees #Korea

I’m excited to share that the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship will be published on June 23 by ELJ Editions. Learn more, preorder, and see the event schedule here: www.bkjacksonwriter.com/book

The South Korean gov't has recently begun to investigate its role in fraudulent adoptions. For @thebaffler.com, I reviewed a new book about how a messianic quest to “save” Korean children created the intercountry adoption industry and is bound up with a familicide: thebaffler.com/latest/god-s...

Congratulations!

The first chapter of THE MINIMALIST, my psychological horror novel of classical music & adoptee identity, is now available online at Criminal Elements! This was such a personal novel for me to write as an adoptee and classical musician & I'm so excited to share more! Read here: tr.ee/DsAMYT 🥚

WONDERLAND: Memoir of a Black-Market Adoption is a 2026 Indies Today Award Runner-Up in Memoir. Grateful to my beta readers, my blurbers and all who have been part of this. November 3rd, @unsolicitedpress.bsky.social. 🖤 #WonderlandMemoir #IndiesAward #Adoptee #BlackMarketAdoption #IndieBooks

New book! Weirdo: Tales of a Geek Adoptee This memoir chronicles my journey as a Baby Scoop Era adoptee and the only science fiction & fantasy geek in my adoptive family. #Adoptee #AdopteeVoices #Adoption #BookSky #Memoir Full description and buy links: www.heathermassey.com/weirdo-tales...

Please join WHERE WE COME FROM co-authors @shannongibney.bsky.social, Diane Wilson, John Coy, and me for a free virtual reading and conversation on 4/29 at 10 am CDT sponsored by #OneBookOneMinnesota! <3 Published by @lernerbooks.bsky.social thefriends.org/minnesota-ce...

Thanks for recommending my book, @adopteereading.bsky.social! ONE OF US has a lot to say about adoption, particularly as it was practiced in 1915, when the book is set. There's a section about the Orphan Trains~~

"the act of finishing the book and just putting it out in the world: it was like jumping off a cliff...I have never done such a high risk thing in my life..." Check out our latest episode with @thesusanito.bsky.social @hollyrizzutopal.bsky.social @ajfields.bsky.social @evalangston.bsky.social

HEY!! -->FOR INDIE BOOKSTORE DAY!! Preorder my new book ONE OF US from Mac's Backs in Cleveland, and you'll get a signed copy when it comes out on Sept. 23. You'll also be eligible to win one of the cool prizes seen below... macsbacks.com/book/9781250...

This YA novel follows an exiled queer #transracial adoptee as he searches for his sister while struggling to recover from religious abuse. By award-winning #adoptee author Mark Oshiro. #AdopteeVoices #YoungAdult #fiction #LGBTQIA

Lynne Leppard's loyalty to her adoptive family was real, but so too was her longing to find out more about her first family. In pages woven with faith, she searches for answers re: identity, security, and belonging. #NewZealand #AdopteeVoices #adoptees #memoir

Thank you to everyone who came out to the “Fighting Tropes, Changing Narratives: BIPOC Adoptees Break Out” panel at #AWP2025 this morning! ✊🏽😭😭 It met so much for us to share our work and be in conversation with us…Let’s keep it up! @thesusanito.bsky.social @alicestephens.bsky.social

The story of a #BabyScoopEra adoptee's search for history, roots, and family, including the shocking disclosure of a secret kept by her adoptive parents and her ultimate acceptance of two distinct sets of relatives. #AdopteeVoices #adoptees #memoir

A DNA test taken to learn about health risks led him to discover, at the age of 66, that the parents he grew up with were not his biological parents. He had been adopted. #LateDiscoveryAdoptee #adoptees #GeneticGenealogy renonr.com/2025/02/27/a...

The Free, All-Virtual Adoptee Literary Festival Returns Next Saturday, March 22nd! www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/the... @adopteelitfest.bsky.social #booksky

Wonderful gathering of 🥚adoptee authors at Tucson Festival of Books!!

My debut poetry chapbook PASTORALE is now available for preorder from Burnside Review! @burnsidereview.bsky.social Poems of yearning, Ovid, Nebraska, Puccini, and sapphic mushrooms. (& adoption🥚) Preorder here: burnsidereview.org/chapbooks-Pa... Cover design by Rory Sparks

Our workshops filled up in two days! Registration for the keynote, panels and readings will be open until March 21st. Virtual and free to attend!

"A probing look at what America gets wrong about transracial adoption." www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/t... @ucpress.bsky.social @alicestephens.bsky.social @kit-myers.bsky.social #booksky #adoption #trna

Grappling with subjects of abuse, violence, mental health & deeply held grief, this #poetry collection asks, what does it truly mean to be loved in a world where you’re seen as second best? By a former foster child. buff.ly/4knXj8L #AdopteeVoices #adoptees #FosterCare #Canada

I chose to create the books that didn't exist, the books that I needed as a child, the books that empower adoptees to believe in themselves - on #ReadAcrossAmerica Day, share the #AdopteesLikeMe series with the young adoptees in your life! AdopteesLikeMe.com

Excited to be with this stellar lineup of adoptee 🥚authors at #AWP25 as we smash the adoption stereotypes in literature!

Thank you to Bodega Magazine for publishing "Cavities and Fillings," another piece in my collection of autofictional short stories. I've had trouble w/ my teeth my whole life, this story explores why while also delving into the double consciousness of the #adoptee. www.bodegamag.com/articles/809...

Journalist Kristen Martin explores the real history of orphanhood in the US: religious indoctrination at the core of the first orphanages, orphan trains that took parentless children out West, the classism & racism underlying child welfare. buff.ly/4bkPnRw #orphans #adoptees #journalism #history

Adopted twins Julie & Jenny provide their parents with an instant family. But as Julie’s parents continue adding children, some painful & tragic experiences test family values & relationships, causing Julie to question everything. buff.ly/41zrO4e #Adopt#AdopteeVoices #adoptees #memoir #AdoptiveFamilies

This one should be good! @adoptionmosaic.bsky.social

For my late night pals, here is the cover reveal for my new book~~~~~

Thank you to the Korean Quarterly for this write-up on the Adoptee Literary Festival 2025. Workshops are full, but registration is still open for the keynote address, panels, and readings. See our website (link in comments) to register.

"Adoption Rights Alliance estimates that 100,000 unmarried [Irish] women had their children adopted domestically from 1922 to 1998. They also note that at least 1,933 were legally adopted to America, with suggestions of another 10,000 illegally adopted." www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2... #adoptees #Ireland

"In Bulgaria, where I am born and live until the age of five, I lose my life. You never hear it referred to in such a melodramatic way, but that is what it feels like to be adopted at an age you remember."

"The push-and-pull of this loneliness is addictive. Perhaps that’s what it means to be an adoptee: to be unbearably lonely and yet unable to stop reaching."

Hey 🥚adoptee authors are being featured at the Tucson Book Festival next month! I'm really excited to be with other adoptee writers.

Registration for Adoptee Literary Festival 2025 is open! Virtual and free to attend. Workshops are first come, first served, so sign up today at adopteelitfest.com

Because some days, the name of the poet, teacher & mentor who's left an indelible mark on you & your writing over the past decade appears in your inbox, for the most glorious of reasons. Congrats, @sunyungshin.bsky.social !!! May 2026 can't come soon enough~

Shocked and honored to see SACRIFICIAL ANIMALS as a Finalist for Best Horror in the 2025 Libby Awards! @libbyapp.bsky.social Check out the full list of amazing books here: shorturl.at/h3hbI

Hey #Oakland I’m reading with two of my favorite people: @gracelp.bsky.social and Faith Adiele at Womb House! 7:00pm on February 20th.

So looking forward to this panel with Marianne Novy at the Tucson Book Festival! I’m such an admirer of her work. #adopteevoices 🥚🧾🍃

Hi! I’m Rena. Poet. Adoptee. Ex-librarian. Occasional artist. 💙 I write about love, healing & dysfunctional families. 🦁 Nova Scotian living the rural life in AB. ❤️‍🩹 Raising a kind human as I re-parent myself. 🩷Almost Loved is my debut collection. #poet #author #indie