Hello? Who Is This? Margaret?

FINALIST, 2025 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards, Non-Fiction: Biography/AutobiographyWINNER, 2025 PenCraft Seasonal Book Award Fall Competition for Non Fiction, Humor Genre2025 NYC Big Book Award - Distinguished FavoriteWINNER, Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Awards, NonfictionTOP PICK WINNER, Author Shout Book AwardsPreteens have Judy Blume, and now those of us who think Shaboozey is an exclamation have Hello? Who Is This? Margaret?Dani Alpert didn't wind up where she thought she would be, but then few of us do. If you're Dani (author of the award-winning memoir The Girlfriend Mom), you cry and then write a collection of funny, absurd, and cathartic essays that turn disappointments into a deeply relatable (and accidental) survival-like guide called Hello? Who Is This? Margaret?.Gazing back on her life through a middle-aged lens, the ingénue, now a member of AARP, uses distorted and unhinged (but always self-aware) humor to cope with life's messiness and universal human failings. Dani's pursuit of success and belonging, and her response to crushing rejection, is at the center of this collection. Whether she's begging Hollywood to take notice of her, shopping for gas masks during COVID, or vacationing at a romantic couple's resort after a heart-wrenching breakup, rejection remains a battle cry to keep going, even when doors continue slamming in her face.Dani perseveres, with equal parts delusion and grit. Her idealism and optimism in the face of endless "almost," "so close," and "not quite" responses is a brutally honest and comedic paean to failure and the opportunities that arise from the misses. She embraces her contradictions and imperfections with compassion and laughter, inspiring others to do the same.These entertaining essays validate the assertion that the attempts themselves are a triumph. Our limitations are self-imposed, and no one else gets to decide when we stop or what we're capable of becoming.