Hilary Zaid has been a Ten­nessee Williams Schol­ar at the Sewa­nee Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence, a James D. Hous­ton Fel­low at the Com­mu­ni­ty of Writ­ers and a two-time atten­dance of Tin House Writ­ers’ Work­shop. Her work has appeared in Moth­er Jones, Eco­tone, Day One, Lilith Mag­a­zine, and else­where. Long-list­ed for the 2018 North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Inde­pen­dent Book­sellers’ Award for Fic­tion, her nov­el Paper is White is a 2018 Fore­word Indies sil­ver medal­ist and the win­ner of the 2018 Inde­pen­dent Pub­lish­ers’ Book Awards (IPPY) in LGBT+ Fic­tion. Her nov­el For­get I Told You This, is the inau­gur­al win­ner of the Bar­bara DiBernard Award.

Title: For­get I Told You This

Description: Amy Black, a sin­gle moth­er and an aspir­ing artist in love with cal­lig­ra­phy, dreams of a cov­et­ed artist’s res­i­den­cy at the world’s largest social media com­pa­ny, Q. When a stranger asks Amy to tran­scribe a love let­ter for him, his dis­ap­pear­ance leads her straight to Q — with the chance to style her­self a 21st-cen­tu­ry sofer­et—and to a group of data pri­va­cy vig­i­lantes who want her to burn Q to the ground.

A very con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish nov­el about faith, free will and what it means to believe, For­get I Told You This asks us what it means to see and be seen in a world in which our every move is surveilled.