🗝️ This is the Moment: Look at My Beautiful New Book!
with a special limited offer when you preorder Woman of the Hour
I’m so excited!
My new book Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion will be published by Vine Leaves Press on July 29, 2025.
Today I reveal the book’s beautiful cover, designed by Jessica Bell.
Early Praise:
“The riveting characters in Woman of the Hour are full of desire, anger, regret, and darkness. Their fragmented lives are tough, but their grit inspires. This brilliant collection makes you love people again.”
— Grant Faulkner, author of The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story and executive producer on America’s Next Great Author.
What Kind of Book Did You Write, Claire?
Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion is a flash fiction collection, containing 50 stories, each less than a 1,000 words.
Many of the stories are inspired by my six years of nomad life, and not all of them are entirely fiction.
Here’s what it says on the back of the book:
A girl changes into a fox in self-defense. An idealist imagines what her new leader should look like, using her pets as reference. Guerrilla gardeners at dawn are sowing life-saving hope. A traveler delights in tasting European chefs. And a cruel ritual for teenage women turns into a revolution.
The fifty stories in this collection transport the reader from an Amsterdam canal to the Oaxacan coast, from a silt-streaked Venice to an imaginary world, from an Icelandic waterfall to a hall of mirrors.
Women play roles to find themselves, resist oblivion, break laws, swallow regrets, take revenge, follow their passions, and eat spiders. They’re everyday women climbing over obstacles and forging life to meet their needs. They dream of connection and find it in peculiar ways. They’re resilient. They’re brilliant.
They’re… you.
Can I Preorder Your Book?
Yes! I’m so glad you asked.
Preorders are vital for authors and publishers in today’s book market. So if you’re curious and would like to read Woman of the Hour, please don’t wait until July and preorder the book soon.
My publisher, Vine Leaves Press, is international and ships from multiple continents. So you can order Woman of the Hour from the USA, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere.
The cost of the book will be displayed in euros (€), because the Vine Leaves Press headquarters is based in Europe, but the books themselves don’t have to cross oceans to reach you.
Is Your Book Any Good?
An excellent question!
Fortunately, some amazing authors I admire agreed to read my collection in advance and shared their opinions with me. One of them was Grant Faulkner, whose early praise you already read above.
Here are two other quotes from two generous flash fiction masters.
"Sixty minutes before she steps in front of a speeding van..." Thus begins Claire Polders' smart, sophisticated, unrelentingly candid examination of female adolescence and womanhood. This collection makes its mark, intellectually and emotionally, with prose that's alive and electric and exquisitely distilled. Polders uses time—wields it actually—as a narrative drumbeat, marching her characters over the jagged terrain and uncertain landscapes of sex and seduction and coming of age. Told from individual and collective points of view, the stories portray not just the pain and rage and sorrows of living as a woman in a patriarchal society, but also those moments of transcendence, transformation, and self-becoming.
Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion is a brilliant and necessary collection for our times.
—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
Reading these words made me very quiet. And enormously grateful, of course.
If Kathy Fish hasn’t convinced you yet, perhaps you want to read what the amazing Thaisa Frank had to say about Woman of the Hour.
“In this brilliant, lyrical collection of flash, Claire Polders shines a kaleidoscopic light on the mystery of being human in a female body. Like figures in a stained-glass window, the many selves she explores assemble into a whole self—contradictory, passionate, and so protean they find it ‘a delight to live in a world where you can witness the dawn multiple times.’ Polders invites the reader to ask the eternal question ‘Who Am I?’ and guarantees you will not be disappointed.”
—Thaisa Frank, author of Heidegger's Glasses and Enchantment.
Is she really talking about me and my book?
Thank you, Grant, Kathy, and Thaisa! I will share more blurbs in the months to come.
Special Limited Offer
UPDATE: As of today, May 15, there are only 3 slots left.
So here’s the deal: The first 10 people who preorder Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion and show me the proof of their purchase (by email or PM) will receive a free paid subscription to Wander, Wonder, Write for 1 year.
Really? But the book is cheaper than a year’s subscription! You might say.
Indeed. Which is why this is a special limited offer, only for the first 10 people.
Preorder Woman of the Hour: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion now!
Can I Have a Preview of the Book?
Of course!
I will share more stories from the collection in the months to come, but I already published one in November:
Last Question: Who Are You Again?
I’m Claire Polders, author of 5 novels and 100+ essays, stories, and book reviews. I was born in the Netherlands, lived in Paris, married an American, started writing in English, and fell in love with Japan. I like being a mindful nomad, but I secretly dream of being a rebel.
Hence the subtitle of my book: Fifty Tales of Longing and Rebellion. Why be a fiction writer if you cannot live vicariously through your characters, right?
My website is currently offline due to some critical error—great timing! If you want to know more about me, my About Page is the best I have for you right now.
In case you’ve forgotten what I look like, here’s me doing a crazy hat pose in Jardín, Colombia in March.
Time to Say Goodbye
Thank you for indulging me today!
I don’t like doing book promotion—who does?—but I love sharing exciting news, and receiving my book cover and preorder link was definitely exciting.
For whoever wants to help me spread the word: I have digital ARCs for reviewers and am available for podcasts, interviews, book club appearances, and more: I’m always open to new ideas and collaborations. Please reply to this email or contact me with a private message in the Substack app.
You can also consider adding my book to your Want-to-Read List on Goodreads.
Likes, comments, and shares of this post show your engagement to the algorithm, which in turn helps my book find its readers.
Every little thing helps—thank you!
All my best,
Claire
P.S. What do you think of the cover?
ITS SO GOOD!!!
Congratulations Claire! I think the cover is great! Good luck with it!