Hello? Who Is This? Margaret?

<p><strong style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Winner of the 2025 PenCraft Seasonal Book Award Fall Competition for Non Fiction - Humor Genre</strong></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(65 65 65 1)>2025 NYC Big Book Award - Distinguished Favorite</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>A comedic look at blind ambition stubborn optimism and perseverance</strong></p><p></p><p>Dani Alpert is an expert on the fortitude and delusion required to pursue childhood dreams that just won't drop dead. Her experiences are a case study in the human spirit's tenacity and its unwavering ability to keep going in the face of crushing rejection<em>.</em> After years toiling in the entertainment industry hearing Almost So close or Not quite on a loop she turned rejection into fuel and humor into a survival tool.</p><p></p><p>Some of Dani's stories dive into the bowels of childhood the creative psyche and the birth of an aspiring Broadway baby. Other episodes explore crippling adult fears and self-doubt and what happens when the ingénue becomes a member of AARP. Whether she's describing her bumpy road trying to get a foothold in Hollywood her retail adventures shopping for gas masks during COVID or her idiotic decision to vacation at a romantic couple's resort after a heart-wrenching breakup Dani offers gentle shoves-inspiration wrapped in cautionary tales-for anyone still chasing their dreams but feeling stuck.</p><p></p><p><em>Hello? Who Is This? Margaret? </em>delivers tales of universally awkward misunderstood and human failings through wit pop culture and Dani's losses and wins (mostly losses). Her humor-sometimes dark and distorted but always self-aware-is a salve for the messiness and absurdities of life. Dani's candid essays speak to the hopeful in all of us.</p>