I have written three fan letters in my life and I have zero regrets about sending them. One was to New Kids on the Block in 1988. They never wrote back. I survived.

Little Laura says write the fan letter. Photo by Amy Khoudari.

A year before I wrote to NKOTB professing my love for both Joey and Donnie I wrote to Lisa Frank. I was in fourth grade, and it was a challenging year for me. My parents' separation was playing out behind doors closed making it only known to me on some unspoken cellular level and I was navigating early adolescence as an uncool kid who got picked on in school. I was messy, creative, and probably weird. I didn’t have the right hair — I brushed my thick curls out and let the frizz hide half my face as opposed to taming my mane into a tight half pony. It’s not that I didn’t want tidy hair, my locks just didn’t want to submit to being controlled on follicular level. Also, I didn’t have the right clothes. I cannot even tell you what the right clothes were. That’s how far out of the cool loop I was.

But I did have things, even coveted things, that no one could take away from me. I had a vivid imagination, a knack for writing in bubble letters, and a comprehensive collection of Lisa Frank stickers—including jumbos. Jumbo stickers were the most prized in the fourth grade sticker club. As their name implies, they are quite big. They took up a whole page of a large photo album. I kept mine on their original wax paper, in a Lisa Frank sticker album.

I recently braved my mother’s storage unit and found my sticker album. Photo by Laura Khoudari.

I loved Lisa Frank and not just because cool kids had Lisa Frank pencils, Trapper Keepers, and stickers. Her saccharine design aesthetic with big, round, bright, animals that lived together in space, on islands with rainbows, or in candy-lands, helped me create my own imaginary worlds that I would pretend to disappear into. Unlike in my own daily reality, nothing bad was going to happen in the world of Lisa Frank.

Lisa Frank’s illustrated world of rainbow bridges, unicorn flights, and ice cream socials where polar bears walked with instead of ate penguins, made me feel happy. Sometimes I would close my eyes and imagine jumping, feet first through the sticker, as if it were a portal to a magical world. On these flights of fancy I would go on adventures leading my squad of teddy bears and puppies and kittens and dinosaurs. Usually we would survive a shipwreck and set up life on a magical island with palm trees, perfect sunsets, and plenty of sweet treats to eat.

Lisa Frank created an empire filled with images that brought me joy and allowed me to escape from the torment of being a picked-on fourth-grader. So I decided to write her a letter and tell her I was a fan. “Dear Lisa,” it started and my mother told me Lisa Frank was not a person but a company. I sent it anyway.

I don’t remember what I wrote to her but I do remember that I heard back from her fan club. I received a letter and enclosed was a long rectangular bookmark-shaped sticker. It had a metallic sheen and featured a picture of an ice cream cone with eight scoops of ice cream topped with a teddy bear wearing a red bow. But I got much more than a sticker that day. Going forward I would know that I had been brave enough to try to introduce myself to my hero; and I received that warm feeling you get when someone you don’t know is kind to you; and I got it in my head that it was okay to be a vulnerable fangirl.

I would send my next fan letter over twenty years later. Just like I decided to say thank you to Lisa Frank and probably ask her some questions about stickers, I decided to thank author Sloane Crosley for writing her collection of essays, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, and to ask her advice about writing personal essays.

Dear Sloane,

I am a 33 year old woman who lives in NYC, and only recently, I embraced my desire to be a writer. I write personal essays. Furiously. A creative nonfiction writing professor/ friend of mine, handed me a copy of I Was Told There’d Be Cake as part of her mission to get me to read, read, read when I was not writing, writing, writing, and I could not put it down.

In the lengthy email I sent, I shared the commonalities and parallels that made me see myself in her work and gushed about her writing. I prattled on and on, in a way that makes me feel both embarrassed and charmed by the me of eleven years ago. I was an unapologetic fan. Then I asked, “Do you have any advice for a newcomer to the world of writing personal creative nonfiction?”

And I signed off with the same honesty that ran throughout:

I would love to hear back from you. I think this is only my second fan letter. I wrote my first fan mail 23 years ago.¹ It was to the New Kids on the Block. I did not hear back but I listened and danced to them anyway.

It seems that I had forgotten about Lisa Frank in my nervous excitement, and also that my honesty knows no bounds when I feel safe. I didn’t just love Sloane Crosley’s essays— her writing made me feel seen and heard. When people feel recognized, and even normalized, as I did by reading I Was Told There’d Be Cake,it can free them up to feel safe. I felt as safe as I did in my imagination as a child. So without fear, I opened up to a woman who I didn’t know but I deeply admired.

Less than two weeks went by when I was startled by Sloane Crosley’s name in my inbox. I had received a response! I took a deep breath, let my cursor hover over her name for a beat, and then clicked. Bracing, I read the opening lines, caught my breath, and realized I would have to keep writing.

Dear Laura,

Apologies for the delay in responding and thank you for this very funny and thoughtful letter. Honestly, it makes my day. So happy that the book meant enough to you that you brought yourself to write “Z. Cavaricci’s” in a subject line.² That’s dedication right there. Anyway, congratulations on making the decision to write — it’s a big and brave one. I don’t really have any general advice except just to work at it. Don’t be afraid to write crap for a while. And try your best to read as much as you can and then kind of forget you read any of it when you sit down to write. Oh, and if you’re writing nonfiction, just try to be as honest as you can with yourself about what you’re really writing.

(Being called a funny writer by a funny writer tickles me to no end!)

I took her advice to heart and I kept writing and writing, reading and reading, and trying to be honest in my stories and with my voice. Seven years later I would start to write my book.

Eventually, I got to meet Sloane Crosley at a reading at Brooklyn Academy of Music. I mentioned my email to her and I was shocked to learn that she remembered me. On the title page of her book, she wrote: “Laura, What a joy to meet you! So happy you’re writing. Thank you for laughing at me — ”

Forever uncool, I kvelled the whole thirty minute trip home.

My autographed copy of I Was Told There’d Be Cake. Photo by Laura Khoudari.

NOTES

1. My email actually said that I sent a fan letter to NKOTB 25 years ago, but Hanging Tough had come out only 23 years prior so I corrected it here for clarity.
2. “Z. Cavaricci’s” were a very popular brand of hideous clothing that I loved and wore during my brief stint living in Westchester from 1990–1992. I bought them at The Galleria Mall in White Plains.