FRISH BRANDT at Books Inc. Palo Alto

Frish will discuss her book Unfinished Business: Writing the Five Essential Letters of Your Life.

She will be in conversation with Roberta Katz.

About the book: Unfinished Business is a useful guide to the art of letter writing, including prompts and exercises to help deepen our most important connections and heal old wounds, by a beloved “letter midwife.”

We all have unfinished business: thank-you notes we meant to write, goodbyes we never spoke, apologies we never managed to give. Here to help us put those words on paper, letter midwife Frish Brandt provides singular guidance on how to write the five fundamental missives that make up the meaning of our lives: Thank you, I’m sorry, I miss you, I love you, and Goodbye.

With real-world examples from her experience of teaching at Stanford Medical School, Harvard Divinity School, and in workshops and individual sessions around the country, she weaves practical writing prompts with gentle reflections on grief, connection, forgiveness, and closure, offering the tools—and the courage—to help us write what we have long held inside. At once a permission slip, a guidebook, and a lyrical ode to the power of the written word, Unfinished Business is a book to read, to write alongside, and to return to again and again.

“This is an antidote to despair and a practice of peace, a book of intimacy and radical reflection. Frish Brandt is a magical presence in the world.” —Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Glorians and When Women Were Birds

“Unfinished Business offers a way to come safely closer to the unfathomable, bringing light to emptiness and love to fear. Brandt’s work is an extraordinary tool to help heal, connect, and trans­form your relationships. Her work is altogether a gorgeous phe­nomenon, and I’ve seen it work wonders time and again.” —Dr. B.J Miller, Director of the Center for Living and Dying, Author of A Beginners Guide to the End

“Frish Brandt evokes relief, wonder, and immense gratitude in all who encounter her letter writing practice. Unfinished Business is a book for every one of us.” —Nancy Horan, New York Times Bestselling Author of Loving Frank and The House of Lincol

Frish Brandt teaches essential letter writing at Stanford University’s School of Medicine and to individuals and institutions around the country, including museums, universities, hospitals, and caregiving associations. She worked in the arts for more than four decades before becoming a full-time Letter Midwife. She lives and writes in San Francisco.

Roberta Katz holds a PhD in anthropology as well as a law degree, and was previously the General Counsel of McCaw Cellular Corporation (now AT&T Wireless) and then of Netscape Corporation. From 2004 to 2017, she served under Stanford University Presidents John Hennessy and Marc Tessier-Lavigne as the Associate Vice president for Strategic Planning at Stanford. She also served as President Tessier-Lavigne’s interim chief of staff. Katz continues to be involved as a consultant to various interdisciplinary initiatives at Stanford, serves on several advisory and nonprofit boards, and is a co-author of Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2021.