Meet
Bess Kalb
Bess Kalb is an Emmy-nominated comedy writer and the bestselling author of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and the Buffalo Fluffalo children's book series. She wrote for eight years on Jimmy Kimmel Live, received a WGA Award in 2016, and has written for the Emmy Awards, the Oscars, and the 2020 DNC. She’s also the head writer and EP of Amazon Prime’s Yearly Departed, and her book is currently being adapted into a feature film.
Her wit shows up daily on Instagram and on her Substack, The Grudge Report - both of which you absolutely should be following. She keeps me laughing and brings a much-needed sense of levity to my world. Her kids couldn’t make the shoot, but her books, which feel like their own kind of children, were there to stand in.
If you can’t be as lucky as we were to spend time with her in person, her words are the next best thing. You’ll come away lighter and inspired.
Meet Bess Kalb
Meet Bess Kalb
Bess
Rachelle: Can you tell us about what you have written on your sweater?
Bess: I sure can. So this says, "I read banned books," and I do. I read, I read banned books to my kids. I read banned books personally. I am horrified that we live in a time where books are banned, in a country where the First Amendment says that there should be freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And I am so glad that Lingua Franca has partnered with PEN America, an incredible organization that fights book bans. As a children's book author, this is something that I care deeply about, and I'm so glad to just allow this message to be something that hopefully more and more people will adopt.
Rachelle: What is your mom survival hack for staying sane?
Bess: My mom survival hack is a sense of humor. I think that if you meet a kid in a moment of hysteria with just enough, not condescending, but with just enough recognition of the absurdity of the situation, you can de-escalate things. So a sense of humor ends up being really, really important for the, like, seven to eight mental and emotional breakdowns that happen, uh, daily in the life of a parent of a six and four.
Rachelle: Seriously.