Where to see Jen Hatmaker at the Bookmarks Festival:
Books & Bites | Friday, September 26 at 7 pm | Buy Tickets Now
Midlife Renaissance Panel | Saturday, September 27 at 1:30 - 2:15 pm | Free festival panel
Book signing | Saturday, September 27 at 2:30 pm | Purchase of Awake required for entry*
Instagram: @jenhatmaker
More about the Saturday panel
Midlife Renaissance: Awakening | Calvary Moravian | 1:30 - 2:15 pm
Jen Hatmaker is a bestselling author, host of For the Love podcast, speaker, advocate, and educator known for sharing wisdom with her trademark authenticity and humor. In Awake: A Memoir, she finds herself navigating an unexpected divorce and questioning the belief systems that have gotten her to this point in life. Hear more about her journey and the lessons we can all learn in this session that's sure to leave you feeling seen and empowered. Moderated by Kendra Adachi, podcast host and author of The Lazy Genius Way and The PLAN.
*Note for the signing line:
To enter the signing line for select authors, you must purchase their new release from Bookmarks (before or at the festival). Your purchase supports the author’s tour, helps us bring more authors to Winston-Salem, and benefits Bookmarks’ nonprofit outreach.
Please also note that Jen Hatmaker will be giving signed book plates to readers in the signing line.
About the Author
Jen Hatmaker is the author of fourteen books, including four New York Times bestsellers, and the host of the award-winning podcast For the Love. She is an author, podcaster, speaker, advocate, educator, mother, and a textbook Enneagram 3.
About AWAKE
From Jen Hatmaker—beloved New York Times bestselling author and host of the For the Love podcast—a brutally honest, funny, and revealing memoir about the traumatic end of her twenty-six-year-long marriage, and the beginning of a different kind of love story.
At 2:30 a.m. on July 11th, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years whispering in his phone to another woman from their bed. It was the end of life as she knew it. In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader, to a divorced wreck on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds parenting five kids alone with no clue about her own bank accounts. Having led millions of women for over a decade—urging them to embrace authenticity, find radical agency, and create healthy relationships—this seemed nothing less than total failure.
In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea—and how she made it to shore. In candid, surprisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife—the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn’t ask for. And, drawing on all her resources—from without and from within—Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point.
More than one woman’s story, Awake is a critical analysis of the story given to all of us: the story of gender limitations, religious subservience, body shame, self-erasure. With refreshing candor, Jen explores a Midlife Renaissance—grieving what’s lost, cherishing possibility, and entering the second half of life wide awake.
What Bookmarks staff have to say about AWAKE
AWAKE hit me straight to my soul. Jen reaches into to the mess and magic of being human - especially those hard parts we don't often talk about. This book is honest, tender, and fierce in all the right ways. A must read if you have ever been through something painful and had to find your way back to yourself, learning to love every version of who you've been along the way. -- Jess
Reading AWAKE feels like sitting with a close friend who’s opening up about their deepest secrets and pains. It’s raw, emotional, and uplifting as Hatmaker shows us the power of confronting the truth and what comes after. This book is truly inspiring, reminding us that we’re not defined by just one moment or chapter in our lives. It’s left me reflecting on how I show up for my friends—and the people who show up for me in return. A must-read for any reader thinking about the paths they’ve taken and the ones they’re still choosing for the future. -- Beth