Open Book, Open Mind; Amanda Hess, "Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age"
Amanda Hess, an award-winning critic at large for The New York Times, will be talking to Sasha Weiss, a deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine, about Hess's debut book, "Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age." When Hess learned that her pregnancy might have an abnormality, naturally she went online, spiraling down digital rabbit holes she never wanted to know existed. This memoir creates a critical record of our digital age that reveals the unspoken ways our lives are being fractured and reconstituted by technology.
Doors open at 6 p.m. The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A and book sales and signing with Watchung Booksellers.
“Only Amanda Hess could step through the blue light looking glass of our phones and explore her specific—and our collective—anxiety, dissociation, data points, targeted ads, and apps; she emerges a more sensate, embodied, and sharper critic. The honesty of 'Second Life' took my breath away.”—Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother
Open Book / Open Mind is sponsored by Montclair Public Library Foundation, Watchung Booksellers, the New Jersey Council on Humanities, Anonymous, Dr. Alex and Doris Malaspina, David and Mary Lee Jones, and our individual Underwriters. We are also grateful for the generous support of our in-kind sponsors, First Congregational Church of Montclair, The George, and Amanti Vino. To support Open Book / Open Mind and other library programs, click here to donate.
- Date:
- Thursday, October 9, 2025
- Time:
- 6:30pm - 8:00pm
- Location:
- Montclair - First Congregational Church of Montclair
- Audience:
- Adults
- Categories:
- Author Talk
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Hess is a critic at large for The New York Times. She writes about Internet and pop culture for the Arts section and contributes regularly to The New York Times Magazine. She has also written for such publications as ESPN: The Magazine, Wired, and Pacific Standard, where her feature on the online harassment of women won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest.
ABOUT THE BOOK
"For more than a decade, Amanda Hess has documented the ways that social media and new technologies have upended our identities, living the contradictions of the internet even as she has tried to make sense of them. But when Hess discovered she was pregnant with her first child, she found herself unexpectedly rattled by a digital identity crisis of her own.
"In the summer of 2020, a routine ultrasound screening detected a mysterious abnormality in Hess’s baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search suddenly sucked her into the destabilizing world of the internet, and she was vulnerable—more than ever—to conspiracy, myth, judgment, commerce, and obsession.
"At once funny, heartbreaking, and surreal, 'Second Life' is a journey that spans a network of fertility apps, prenatal genetic tests, gender reveal videos, rare disease Facebook groups, “freebirth” influencers, and hospital reality shows. Hess confronts technology’s phantom traumas and seductive idols as they follow her through pregnancy and into her son’s young life and, in doing so, has constructed a critical record of our digital age that reveals the unspoken ways our lives are being fractured and reconstituted by technology."—Penguin Random House
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER
Sasha Weiss is a deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine, where she covers film, television, books, fine art, theater, and music, and edits award-winning writers such as Wesley Morris, Teju Cole, Sam Anderson, and Carina del Valle Schorske. Weiss has written features for the Times on subjects such as the feminist artist Judy Chicago, the innovative theater director Sam Gold, and the ballet dancer and choreographer Justin Peck. Prior to joining the New York Times, Weiss was literary editor at the newyorker.com and an editor at The New York Review of Books.
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