Story ARC: Strangers

1/13/26: Belle Burden's memoir of marriage is an examination of intimacy.

Before I dive into a quick blurb on Belle Burden’s new book, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, I’m going to get ahead of a few anticipated questions with quick-fire answers (and the promise of a thorough 2026 membership update coming your way imminently!!!!):

When is the next Ladies Who Lit event? How will it be announced?

February 2026! Next month’s book selection & discussion details will soon be released in the same format you’re accustomed to, with a few caveats that allude to some forthcoming updates for Chicago-based LWL book club operations. But for February’s event, it’ll be business as usual:

• Paid Substack subscribers get first dibs on a finite number of tickets for 24 hours.

• After paid subscribers get first dibs, any remaining tickets will be announced and released to all Substack subscribers, as well as through Instagram.

Will Substack still be the primary mode of programmatic information sharing for LWL this year?

Yes! Chicago-based LWL book club announcements will still be shared through Substack in 2026, however:

• Beginning in March, Chicago-based programming will no longer be automatically pushed to non-paid subscribers through Substack after the 24-hour advanced window. If you’re based in Chicago and want to regularly attend our events, become a paid subscriber to ensure you’re receiving guaranteed seating and/or early access to our discussion!

• THAT BEING SAID: Membership tiers will be slightly tweaked to better support current and prospective Chicago-based clubbers’ participation. To my fellow Chicago girls: do not worry—we will navigate these changes together, and I promise they are in your favor! While I finalize updates and create more tailored membership and subscription tiers, all billing has been paused.

Change? Whyyyyyyyyyyy?

Ladies Who Lit is a Chicago-based book club that celebrates writing by women. But over the past year, we’ve succeeded in creating a platform for women’s stories that transcends our city, and I’m thrilled that our lens on literature and life has so perfectly positioned LWL to expand its editorial content and digital presence to continue reaching broader audiences in 2026!

For the current Chicago-based clubbers, I’ve put together an incredible slate of in-person programming for our club this year. I will continue to choose books for our in-person discussions that afford us a unique lens on Chicago’s arts and culture landscape while further informing our shared and evolving theses on what it means to be a woman in the world today. You’ll receive a more thorough email with updates and details on February’s event very soon.

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WITHOUT FURTHER ADIEU, I am pleased to introduce the first edition of Story ARC, LWL’s weekly digest of new releases, including both fiction and non-fiction! Here at LWL HQ, we are very lucky insofar that I receive early copies i.e. “Advanced Reader’s Copies” of as-yet unreleased titles that might be pertinent to our book club’s interests! I used to dream of days like this, tbh! Don’t ask me why Tuesday is the most popular day for new releases, but it is. On weeks where there are notable releases to share, I’ll send a story ARC! This week, there’s only one, and it’s a masterpiece.

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, is Belle Burden’s literary debut. It’s a gorgeously vulnerable expansion of her 2023 NYT Modern Love essay, “Was I Married to a Stranger?” in which she recounts the debilitating shock of learning her husband of 20 years is having an affair. The infidelity itself presents as one type of betrayal, but the complete lack of clues is what Burden has the hardest time grappling with. Until the day he announces that he is leaving his wife and their three children, Burden describes a perfect marriage and an intentionally built and shared life between her and her husband, James. She likens their coupling to that of the pair of osprey birds that return to their house on Martha’s Vineyard each spring—mates for life. As anyone who’s gone through a breakup can understand, the initial impulse to conduct a full forensic analysis on your broken relationship is instinctual, and often unproductive. That is not the case with Strangers, in which Burden graciously gives us the play by play of her retroactive search for clues, unearthing quite a bit about herself and her emotional inheritance in the process. Strangers is a portrayal of the rings of fire women jump through to behave palatably—even in the face of betrayal—only to complete the obstacle course and realize that you might as well burn the whole thing down. Burden’s memoir is a beautiful bonfire announcing a wonderful “new” literary voice.

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
Belle Burden
Release date: January 13, 2026
The Dial Press