Liana Finck

Liana Finck

Liana Finck is a regular contributor to The New Yorker. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Berlin Prize, and a Mandel Fellowship for Cultural Leadership. She has had artist residencies with the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Finck’s 2022 book Let There Be Light won a National Jewish Book Award, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by The New Yorker. Other books include You Broke It, How to Baby, and Passing for Human. Finck lives in New York.

How to Baby: A No-Advice-Given Guide to Motherhood, with Drawings

How do you know if you’re ready to have a baby? How do you know if you might be pregnant? And how do you deal with peeing all the time and being hungry all the time and fielding well-meaning but kind of insulting advice and finding a doula and being dropped by your old friends and learning why it’s called mom brain and not dad brain and the tyranny of the milestones you’re not meeting and negotiating boundaries with in-laws and realizing that your heart now exists outside of your chest and in the body of this tiny little being whose entire existence depends on the quality of your care?

To tackle these questions and many others, award-winning cartoonist and memoirist Liana Finck began illustrating her early years of motherhood, giving images and language to her insecurities, frustrations, and wild joy.

In How to Baby, Finck takes her witty and lacerating cartoons (“Hobbies for Pregnant Women: Waiting on Hold with the Insurance Company”) and weaves them together with comic essays (“You Married a Brute. Worse. You’re a Nag: Go Ahead and Argue with Each Other”), handy lists (“Nesting. The Comprehensive List of What to Buy and Why Getting Things Used Is Dangerous and Unamerican”), and profound observations. Together, these brilliant pieces form an immersive and comprehensive narrative whole—a baby book, a resource, and an emotional balm—for our time.

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You Broke It!

This collection of classic parental nags are cleverly betrayed by the situations shown, in which it’s made clear that the child knows better. Each scenario is worthy of a giggle, adding a lightheartedness to the inevitable dynamics between parents and children. Cartoonist Liana Finck has created a catharsis for her own childhood memories of knowing better than authority figures, and in doing so, validates young readers with the respect and understanding they deserve.

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BE CURIOUSER

The Craft of Writing: Liana Finck on the beauty of problems. –Lithub.com

A cartoonist’s guide to navigating ‘normal’. –NPR

Parenting Advice I Was Given (And Didn’t Take). –Liana Finck, The New Yorker

FESTIVAL SHOWS

Mom’ing in the Morn’ing

An Evening with Liana Finck &
Alice Winn

How to Baby: A No-Advice-Given Guide to Motherhood, with Drawings

You Broke It!