A modern-day Bridget Jones’s Diary-meets-Eat, Pray, Love written as an open love letter to the author's future life partner, I Just Haven't Met You Yet chronicles Tracy Strauss’s dating history and her journey to dismantle the effects and stigmas of an abusive #MeToo-themed past, break free of destructive relationship patterns, and ultimately conquer her fear of truly being seen by the world, flaws and all. Through telling her story, Strauss shares the transformative lessons she learned and self-empowerment she achieved while overcoming each hurdle (including her PTSD diagnosis and recovery) along the way to finding the love of her life. A book years in the making, I Just Haven't Met You Yet cinched a publishing deal after the author's Publishers Weekly Soapbox essay (reprinted in Ms.) aired about the cowardice of publishers to take on this unflinching, all-too-real story.
I Just Haven’t Met You Yet is a story about taking big risks, changing old habits and beliefs about dating, and speaking back to the naysayers, especially one's inner love saboteur, and encourages readers to empower themselves by taking a challenging look at the ways the negative events of their lives, including sexual harassment and abuse, have shaped their self-perception and created obstacles to personal success, and to change that troubled self-image along with their (love) lives. Celebrity life coach Kim Gravel of The Steve Harvey Show calls Strauss “a talented author and UBER smart!” Author Leah Hager Cohen says, “With verve, urgency and unflinching resolve—not only to tell her story, but to transform it into a creative tool for envisioning change—Tracy Strauss details the stages of her hard-won journey toward a future love. At once achingly vulnerable and surprisingly steely, I Just Haven’t Met You Yet offers solace and hope.” I Just Haven't Met You Yet is a prime mover and the only epistolary memoir cum dating/relationship essay book of its kind.
Tracy Strauss has been named by Bustle as one of eight women writers with advice to follow. Former essays editor for The Rumpus, her personal essays and feature articles have appeared in Glamour, Ms., Salon, HuffPost, Writer's Digest Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Cognoscenti, and The Southampton Review, among other publications, including her six-month Ploughshares blog series on "Writing Trauma: Notes of Transcendence" and her recent article on "#MeToo: Crafting Our Most Difficult True Stories," for Poets & Writers Magazine. Tracy has been featured on television in her role as a relationship blogger for the Huffington Post. Former VP of the Women's National Book Association Boston Chapter and winner of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award for Nonfiction, she currently teaches writing at the New England Conservatory and Grub Street in Boston, and moonlights as a Zumba instructor. Her website is www.tracystrauss.com.
Melissa Faliveno is the senior editor of Poets & Writers Magazine. She is an essayist, editor, musician, and Midwesterner living in Brooklyn, New York. Her essays have appeared in Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, Green Mountains Review, Isthmus, Lumina, and Midwestern Gothic, among others, and received a notable selection in Best American Essays 2016. Born and raised in small-town Wisconsin, she received a BA from the University of Wisconsin and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College, where she teaches workshops in magazine writing. She is a founding member of the indie rock band Self Help, whose debut album, Maybe It's You, was released in fall 2018. She is at work on an essay collection about gender, class, and the Midwest.
