Introducing Parea's First Author: Jenna Matecki
“What a life that is. One in which your bliss is something that you invented.”
- Jenna Matecki, from her upcoming Parea book.
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Next week is a week that already feels surreal, and it’s not even here yet. It marks the soft launch of Parea, the announcement of our first book and first two authors, and begins the building of the Parea community. I’m so excited / happy / proud / nervous / joyful / grateful I could cry. I probably will.
I’ve shared my vision for Parea, publishing, community, and the overall reading experience, and I want to take a moment now to share more about the author of our first book.
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Jenna Matecki is a strategic comms extraordinaire, she’s designed CSR programs for some of the largest companies in the world, she’s hosted podcasts, a video journalism series, and multiple newsletters. She started a beloved postcards poetry project, and now she’s Parea’s first author. Her book comes out next week, available for pre-sale on www.pareabooks.com.
This book is special. Like any great creative work, it’s not so much about what the book is, but how the book makes you feel. To understand this book, you have to understand Jenna.
I met Jenna in 2018. I was working at a popular beauty company in Manhattan, and I brought her in to discuss our corporate social responsibility strategy. While it wasn’t the right time to kick off that project, I knew I wanted her in my life so I asked her on a platonic friend date. She suggested archery, an Ethiopian cooking class, or an obscure art museum visit. I loved her instantly.
When I committed to building Parea, Jenna was the first person I called. I was sitting on a park bench in Principe Real, a beautiful neighborhood in Lisbon, when I floated (ok, insisted on) the idea of this book to Jenna. I’d been reading her writing for years and she knows how to write, yes, but more than that she knows how to use language to strike a particular chord in a reader, what I call the “make me care” chord. While her passion is nature, sustainability, the environment, and all things earth-related, I didn’t want her to write yet another fear-mongering, climate change, the world is ending book. Jenna doesn’t monger fear, she inspires joy.
I wanted her to write about how she sees the world—because how she sees it is why she cares about it. She finds the beauty in every single place, every person, every location. When you have a conversation with her about your daily coffee, she hears about the magic of a quotidian ritual. When you walk by ruins, she imagines the spectacular history and all of the monumental things that happened inside those ruins. While you’re happy to simply lie on the beach, she sees the entire world beneath the sea, the individual grains of sand, the way the tides are impacted by the moon and the surreal way in which all of us are connected to each other and the world around us.
We’ve been working on this book since January. It’s taken many different forms, the chapters and stories have been ordered and reordered, we’ve spent dozens of hours on the phone and on Zoom chipping away at this. It’s the first book she’s ever written and it’s the first book I’ve ever edited. It was daunting for both of us, but it was also so damn invigorating. It’s hard to bring words to the feeling of becoming who you’ve always wanted to be while partnering with someone who’s becoming who they’ve always wanted to be, but that’s exactly what happened over the past five months.
This book is a true reflection of Jenna’s perspective. She captures moments that others likely forgot, she sees beauty in places that some dismiss as too crowded, too polluted, too remote, or too simple. I’m certain that if we all experienced life the way Jenna does, we’d likely take more care of the things, places, and people who surround us.
That is what I hope this book inspires in readers—a deeper sense of connection to their own personal world, and a desire to forever preserve and savor that profound connection.
People all over the world have read drafts of this book, and the overwhelming sentiment is that this book simply makes you feel good. It prompts you to be more observant, it helps you recall some of your fondest memories, it gets you excited about the world in a way you likely haven’t been for the past couple of years. This book shows you that you can invent bliss—even if just for a moment, even when it seems impossible.
I’m so proud of what Jenna created. I cannot wait for you to read and share this book, this little slice of syntactic bliss.