For a decade, it was just the two of them—a happy marriage between two introverts. Then, Stephanie Duncan Smith , the writer behind Slant Letter, and the new memoir EVEN AFTER EVERYTHING, chose to expand her family with children, and thus release a life of solitude on her terms.

Desperate to preserve her agency and inner life, she found writing to be an unexpected practice of personhood amid the chaos and noise of parenting. You can can read an excerpt from Stephanie's memoir here: