Foxes for Everybody
Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood
Will be published approx. on 15. January 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-0-8101-4953-3 (ISBN)
Description
Meditations on time, motherhood, and the ordinary beauty of everyday life
Like a newborn's patterns of sleeping and waking, the revelations of motherhood don't follow a reasonable schedule, and there's no clocking out. Organized around the hours of the day, Foxes for Everybody gives voice to the marvels, fears, absurdities, and astonishments of parenthood. These essays offer twenty-four glimpses into how we experience time, our families, our planet, and all of those small moments that aren't small at all. In memories and reflections that weave through tornadoes and jellyfish, cemeteries and carousels, mortality, mental health, and the exquisite gift of a perfect sentence, acclaimed writer Catherine Pierce reminds us that fear and joy can and do live side by side, and urges us to stay awake - even when, especially when, we're at the brink of exhaustion - to the possibility of wonder.
Like a newborn's patterns of sleeping and waking, the revelations of motherhood don't follow a reasonable schedule, and there's no clocking out. Organized around the hours of the day, Foxes for Everybody gives voice to the marvels, fears, absurdities, and astonishments of parenthood. These essays offer twenty-four glimpses into how we experience time, our families, our planet, and all of those small moments that aren't small at all. In memories and reflections that weave through tornadoes and jellyfish, cemeteries and carousels, mortality, mental health, and the exquisite gift of a perfect sentence, acclaimed writer Catherine Pierce reminds us that fear and joy can and do live side by side, and urges us to stay awake - even when, especially when, we're at the brink of exhaustion - to the possibility of wonder.
Reviews / Votes
"Catherine Pierce's Foxes for Everybody is a pitch-perfect rendering of early parenthood, and the writing is so gorgeous it made my throat catch. This book reminded me that our lives are like poems: compressed, shimmering with possibility, and containing so much despite their brevity that we need to look again, and deeper, and deeper again." - Maggie Smith, New York Times best-selling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful"Pierce's Foxes for Everybody meditates on motherhood as an experience characterized by perpetual anxiety, feral love, and constant engagement with pressing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual questions. Vivid and immersive, this book carries readers beyond a mere recitation of the toils and delights of parenthood and into a place where parenting becomes a seed for deep and serious grappling with ethics and social responsibility. Pierce brings together the mind, body, and heart as she reflects on the terror of letting yourself love totally and completely. Foxes for Everybody is a beautiful, wise book you won't be able to put down." - Kathryn Nuernberger, author of Held: Essays in Belonging
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Dimensions
Height: 177 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
136 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-4953-3 (9780810149533)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Catherine Pierce is the author of five poetry collections, including the upcoming Dear Beast and the most recent Danger Days. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and has won two Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, she served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021 to 2025.
Content
The Next Right Now (1:00 a.m.)
Winter Work (2:00 a.m.)
Narrative Theory (3:00 a.m.)
A Small Defense of Screen Time (4:00 a.m.)
An Incomplete Catalogue of My Vigilance (5:00 a.m.)
Existentialism (6:00 a.m.)
Perfect Sentence (7:00 a.m.)
Parenting Metaphor (8:00 a.m.)
Truth (9:00 a.m.)
What It Sounds Like (10:00 a.m.)
Naming (11:00 a.m.)
Stings (12:00 p.m.)
A Total Solar Eclipse Is Visible from Any Given Point on Earth Once Every 375 Years, on Average (1:00 p.m.)
Beachcombing (2:00 p.m.)
Carousel (3:00 p.m.)
One Man’s Treasure Is Another Man’s Treasure (4:00 p.m.)
Resolution (5:00 p.m.)
What We Found (6:00 p.m.)
The Apologetic Body (7:00 p.m.)
The Idea of It: Three Countries (8:00 p.m.)
Company (9:00 p.m.)
Foxes (10:00 p.m.)
Accomplishment (11:00 p.m.)
Animals (12:00 a.m.)
Acknowledgments
Winter Work (2:00 a.m.)
Narrative Theory (3:00 a.m.)
A Small Defense of Screen Time (4:00 a.m.)
An Incomplete Catalogue of My Vigilance (5:00 a.m.)
Existentialism (6:00 a.m.)
Perfect Sentence (7:00 a.m.)
Parenting Metaphor (8:00 a.m.)
Truth (9:00 a.m.)
What It Sounds Like (10:00 a.m.)
Naming (11:00 a.m.)
Stings (12:00 p.m.)
A Total Solar Eclipse Is Visible from Any Given Point on Earth Once Every 375 Years, on Average (1:00 p.m.)
Beachcombing (2:00 p.m.)
Carousel (3:00 p.m.)
One Man’s Treasure Is Another Man’s Treasure (4:00 p.m.)
Resolution (5:00 p.m.)
What We Found (6:00 p.m.)
The Apologetic Body (7:00 p.m.)
The Idea of It: Three Countries (8:00 p.m.)
Company (9:00 p.m.)
Foxes (10:00 p.m.)
Accomplishment (11:00 p.m.)
Animals (12:00 a.m.)
Acknowledgments