‘Boom Town’ author Nic Stone’s 11 Good Things

Nic Stone is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of a bunch of award-winning — and frequently banned — books for kids. She loves bacon, bright colors, lush prose, strong narrative voices, kissing, plot twists, babies and people who are fully themselves without apology. She was born in, raised in (for the most part) and lives in Atlanta, and she recently released her first adult novel, Boom Town, an ode to her home city. 

Here, in no particular order, are her 11 good things.

1. Fernbank Science Center. Not the museum of natural history — which, don’t get me wrong, is also cool. The science center. Admission is FREE (Though you do have to pay for the planetarium show, which makes sense to me). Parking is FREE. The experience is PRICELESS. This was my favorite field trip as a kid growing up in metro Atlanta, and it’s one of my favorite places to decompress now as an adult.

2. Year of Yes: 10th Anniversary Edition by Shonda Rhimes. When your idol re-releases one of the best memoirs you’ve ever read, and there are seven new chapters in it, you re-buy it and you read it again. And also listen to it. And maybe even figure out how to use AI to turn it into a video of the G.T.W.O.A.T. (greatest television writer of all time) reading it aloud to you like your favorite young auntie would read a bedtime story.

3. The Cheetah Lounge. Yep. You read that correctly. And yes, I do mean that Cheetah Lounge. The lamb lollipops are to die for.

4. Adam Grant. There are a number of wicked smart white dudes whose words and ideas really resonate with me — Rory Sutherland, Daniel Kahneman and Will Storr are on the list — but that Adam Grant. What a guy!

5. My fourth grader’s epic handwriting. Definitely gonna get it made into a font before it “improves.”

6. Coffee table books about Black artists. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kehinde Wiley, Virgil Abloh, Nina Chanel Abney, Salehe Bembury, Bisa Butler, Ruth E. Carter …

7. Microsoft Word. While all the writer homies are fooling around with these newfangled word processing programs and apps, I’mma keep it old school. Typing these 11 Good Things in this good #7 as we speak, in fact.

8. Making out. In a world gone virtual and slowly being overtaken by machines that will do our thinking AND communicating for us, it’s easy to lose sight of true connection. Sitting down face to face. Having in-person conversations with no agenda. Hugging. And under the right conditions, kissing. Passionately. For an extended period of time. With no agenda other than the enjoyment of another person’s mouth.

9. Living room kids. Yes, that video game you’re playing on your iPad is mad loud and sounds mildly violent. Yes, you and your brother bickering over who gets to hold the remote is a little irritating. Yes, you’ve again knocked the couch out of place because you can’t seem to not use it as a trampoline. But also, yes, I’d rather have you down here in the living room with me than up in your bedroom with the door closed.

10. The Instagram account of artist CJ Hendry. From the stunningly realistic colored pencil drawings to the immaculate curated experience exhibitions (which I’ve yet to experience myself), I highkey wanna be the Black CJ somehow.

11. Black women thriving. Nothing more needs to be said.