We’re going to diverge from the roundup format of the Sunday Notes for a week in favor of a light personal essay combined with an essential question or two for you.
You’ve been to a dinner party, right? A handful of friends of the host, assembled over a well-staged table, the host’s favorite dishes (usually cooked, sometimes ordered), a few bottles of wine, and most importantly, unexpected conversation.
The host’s job is that of a curator. They’re the master of ceremonies, carefully selecting the right amount of food, the presentation, the timing of the evening, the guest list, and sometimes even the seating arrangement. When I was 21 I went to my Swedish boyfriend’s family’s house for a birthday dinner party and his father, the host, sat me as far away from my boyfriend as possible. I thought it was because he didn’t like me and he was using this to make a point but really it’s just Swedish custom to split up people who know each other and pair them with new people. I was upset until I spent the evening talking to a woman who had traveled the world as a diplomat. If they’re a good host, they know exactly what they’re doing—they’re keen to get Darren and Jack into the same room because Darren has a big project he’s just started working on and Jack is exactly the collaborator he needs, or they know that Dalia and Maria will hit it off because they both recently went through divorces and would be good support for each other.
I recently attended a dinner party at the Cannes Lions festival. It was ten people and I only knew one person. I ended up sitting next to a wonderfully energetic, charismatic, and compassionate creative from South Africa who had worked at Sesame Street, YouTube, and Pinterest, to name a few. Her brother was next to her and was the CEO of one of the top global creative agencies. Across from me was a Bosnian man who’d moved to the US after the Bosnian war and embodied the American dream—he went from working the lowest job at a small record label to owning his own renowned immersive sound agency. Next to him was the woman who leads the commercial side of one of the immersive augmented reality gaming company that created Pokemon GO. On my other side was another South African guy around my age who had just bought a house in a tiny 200 person town in Costa Rica, which happened to be the same town I surfed in for a few weeks during COVID. We became fast friends, talking about everything from German history and philosophy (he lives in Berlin now while his house is being built) to magical realism fiction to the politics of South Africa. We also discovered that he had founded a company that another friend had interned for and was the direct competitor of a company I used to do the marketing and comms for, and we went to the same parties in Brooklyn years ago.
This dinner was the highlight of my time in Cannes because it emphasized the power of bringing together a small group of warm, complementary, and curious people. The Cannes festival is mostly about the deals—ad-based businesses want to squeeze ad dollars out of big brands, big brands want to show the creativity of their campaigns and technology, and agencies are on the hunt for new clients. It’s likely that dinner will generate business for our company, but the point is that of all the multi-million dollar activations, the free-flowing rose and beach houses, and the blowout evening parties, the most memorable part of my week was this dinner.
You may be wondering, what does this have to do with books? For two reasons—first, it’s how I think of my Parea authors. I don’t care how many followers they have, how many articles have been written about them, how much “success” they’ve had in their past ventures, writing or otherwise. I care about the impression they’d make at a dinner party. Are they deeply passionate about something? Do they enjoy engaging with others? Do they have interesting things to say, things that stay with you for months, hopefully years? Are they kind, warm, and inviting? My dream is to have a big dinner party with the Parea authors to bring this vision to life.
The other reason this is relevant is because I’m thinking about the campaign for Jenna Matecki’s The Hours Before Dusk. Jenna writes poetry and short stories from cities all over the world, but at its core, the book is about the magic of what happens when people come together. You’ll hear more about this in the coming weeks—I’ll write about how this is an example of bringing your book to life creatively and unexpectedly—but for now, I have two questions for you:
What’s the best dinner party you’ve ever been to?
What details are important to you when you host a dinner party? (Candles, table linens, clever questions, playlists, etc.)
Hoping you have a soul-filling dinner party soon,
Amy