SMALL TALK
A book on growing up, growing apart, and relearning the lost art of making friends.
[Print design, Bookmaking]
While making friends once felt effortless in childhood, growing up brings new struggles with socializing and forming deeper relationships. Social anxiety begins to surface. Reaching out feels harder. Relationships can start to feel transactional. Small Talk is a collection of poems, think pieces, internet rants, messages, and anecdotes that share these shared struggles through personal and collective stories.
The book invites you to sit down and reflect on how connection has changed over time. The connections that once formed naturally now require vulnerability and courage. Rather than dwelling in nostalgia and lamenting over the past, the book offers a hopeful perspective on learning how to move forward and rediscover friendship, whatever form it might take now.
Small Talk is divided into three parts: “the playground,” on the simplicity and innocence of childhood friendships (green section); “a whole new ballgame,” on the changes and struggles of making friends as we grow older (red section); and “rewriting the playbook,” on how people are consciously and creatively finding their way back to friendship (blue section).
This book was hand-bound using Japanese stab binding and printed on 80 lb construction paper.
