Virtual Author Roundtable: Adoption in America

Gabrielle Glaser; AMERICAN BABY (non-fiction)

The shocking truth about postwar adoption in America, told through the bittersweet story of one teenager, the son she was forced to relinquish, and their search to find each other.

Gabrielle Glaser is the author, most recently, of American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption, which the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR named as a top book of 2021. Gabrielle's 2013 book examining women's drinking and the American rehab industry, Her Best-Kept Secret: Why Women Drink -- and How They Can Regain Control was a New York Times bestseller. She has covered the intersection of health, medicine, and culture for The New York Times and many other publications, including The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, and Scientific American, and is the mother of three grown daughters. 

Jeff Hoffmann; OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (a novel)

Adoptive parents bring their baby home and begin to fall in love with their child, even as the birthmother decides to reclaim her baby. Everyone’s life is shattered when the adoptive parents—and the baby—disappear without a trace. 

Jeff Hoffmann quit a perfectly good job at the age of forty-seven to pursue an MFA in fiction. That lapse in judgement led to the publication of his debut novel Other People’s Children in 2021—the paperback will release on April 5^th of this year. Hoffmann’s writing has appeared in Barely South Review, The Sun, Harpur Palate, The Roanoke Review, Booth, and Lunch Ticket among others, and he is the winner of the Madison Review’s Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction. He lives in Elmhurst, IL, with his wife and their two adopted children.  

Julie McGue; TWICE A DAUGHTER (memoir)

A domestic adoptee, and an identical twin, McGue writes about her five-year search for birth relatives, finding out who she is, where she belongs, and making sense of it.

Julie Ryan McGue is adopted. And she is also a twin. But because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and the names of their birth parents — which becomes pertinent for Julie when, at 48 years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues. McGue’s poignant and hopeful debut memoir, Twice a Daughter, chronicles the complex search for her uncharted family history.

Lisa Wingate; BEFORE WE WERE YOURS (a novel) and BEFORE AND AFTER (non-fiction)

A bestselling novel based upon one of America’s most notorious adoption scandals and the real-life stories of orphans who survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

Lisa Wingate is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over thirty novels, including the instant NYT bestseller The Book of Lost Friends and Before We Were Yours, which remained on the NYT list for over two years and has sold over three million copies. She is a Goodreads Choice award winner for historical fiction and a Southern Book Prize winner. She lives with her husband in Texas.