How to Say Goodbye
A USA TODAY Bestseller
An NPR "Book We Love"
A finalist for the California Book Award
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
Wendy MacNaughton is a New York Times-bestselling artist, illustrator, and graphic journalist with a degree in social work who combines these practices to tell the stories of people who are often overlooked. She has illustrated and/or authored eleven books, including Salt Fat Acid Heat, The Gutsy Girl, and Meanwhile in San Francisco: The City in Its Own Words. Her visual storytelling series Meanwhile was the New York Times's first weekly drawn journalism column. The creator of DrawTogether and co-founder of Women Who Draw, she lives in the Bay Area.
Instagram/Twitter/YouTube @wendymac / wendymacnaughton.com
"Tenderly illustrated... [MacNaughton] distills hours of sitting, being there and waiting into a beautiful reminder that death is a part of living and that we can learn from it. "Follow their lead." "Just be there." "Cry. A lot." This "how-to" guide about dying reminds the living to embrace the present and deepen our relationships." --NPR, "Books We Love"
"Stunningly touching." --Steven Levitt, Freakonomics Radio "Quietly powerful ... Wendy MacNaughton's gentle drawings are followed by a deep well of resources for the dying and those who love and care for them." --Bookpage, starred review "A tender illustrated field guide to being present ... The book's beating heart is an invitation to grow comfortable with change, with uncertainty, with vulnerability." --Maria Popova, The Marginalian "Words are spare, poignant, and practical: 'If you don't know what to say, start by saying that. That's very vulnerable.' An introduction from a hospice physician and a list of resources round this out as a perfect library book: one that everyone could use, one time or another." --Booklist "There are many kinds of grace in this little book . . . [there is an] underlying kindness that runs throughout." --Rebecca Solnit, author of HOPE IN THE DARK "Accessible, profound, moving, and beautiful. A unique and much-needed addition to the literature about death and dying." --Louise Aronson, MD, author of ELDERHOOD "Like singing bowls whose sounds reverberate through us, MacNaughton's drawings resonate emotional tones of the tender moments she deftly portrays." --Ira Byock, MD, author of DYING WELL "With keen eyes, a skillful hand, and a warm heart, MacNaughton has created a teaching manual on how to say goodbye . . . a gift to all of us as we face death in its many forms." --Mary Pipher, author of WOMEN ROWING NORTH "This beautiful little book is luminous and dark, heavy and light, heartbreaking and glorious. It's a gift to see the world through Wendy MacNaughton's eyes." --Lucy Kalanithi, MD, Clinical Associate Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine "A modern legend in the field of American illustration...[her] illustrations skitter across the page with delicate intensity, like fresh fuzzy roots meeting soil." --Saveur "We've been enamored of artist-graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton's breezy-yet-hyper-perceptive sketches, humanizing portraits, and urban tableaus for years now... the SF resident [is] something like our illustrator laureate." --San Francisco Bay Guardian "[MacNaughton is] like a modern-day Margaret Mead armed with ink and watercolor, not a critic or commentator but an observer and amplifier of voice." --BrainPickings
