Freeman’s
Love
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Freeman’s
Love
Est. 2015
Edited by
John Freeman
Grove Press
New York
Copyright © 2020 by John Freeman
Managing Editor: Julia Berner-Tobin
Copy Editor: Kirsten Giebutowski
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
First Grove Atlantic edition: October 2020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-0-8021-5783-6
eISBN 978-0-8021-5784-3
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Contents
John Freeman
Mieko Kawakami
Deborah Levy
Semezdin Mehmedinovic´
Louise Erdrich
Daisy Johnson
Valzhyna Mort
Gunnhild Øyehaug
Sandra Cisneros
Haruki Murakami
Niels Fredrik Dahl
Richard Russo
Robin Coste Lewis
Olga Tokarczuk
Andrew McMillan
John Freeman
The first time I sent a love letter, I misspelled “love.”
Or nearly did.
This would have been around 1979. I was lacing up my shoes to sprint over to my classmate Betsy’s house when my mother found me. Where are you going? I hadn’t yet learned to feel ashamed of myself, so I told her.
I’m going to put a love letter in her mailbox.
Can I see?
My mother spoke that way. Not, let me see; or hand it here. But, can I see? I showed her the love letter.
Oh honey, you might want to change this. You spell “love” like this.
She wrote the