It’s been a while since we’ve seen a novel from Madison writer Susanna Daniel. Daniel, who runs the Madison Writers’ Studio with novelist Michelle Wildgen, published her last novel, Sea Creatures, in 2013.

It wasn’t a fallow period. Between Sea Creatures and her new novel, Girlfriending, which publishes on Feb. 10, Daniels wrote another novel that she was on the verge of selling in March 2020. Things stalled because of the pandemic, but ultimately, Daniel says, it was the murder of George Floyd that made her decide not to publish it. “The world changed so much,” she says.“It doesn’t really matter if it was a good book or not. It wasn’t me anymore and it wasn’t what I wanted to put out in the world anymore.”

The new Girlfriending is autofiction, a genre that — like all fiction — blends truth with invention, but leans more heavily into real events. The narrator of Girlfriending is, like Daniel, an editor and writer who teaches writing classes. Like Daniel, her last name is Daniel (the narrator has no first name).

Girlfriending’s narrator, newly divorced from her husband, begins dating women and experiences two breakups in fairly short order. She vows to find 10 more women to date, as part of what the character terms her “lesbian adolescence.”

“I was writing while I was heartbroken — all of it was very much happening in real time,” Daniel says. She would come home from a date and start taking notes. “I was almost trying to watch myself from a distance so that I could find some kind of story to tell myself about this massive hole I had fallen into.”

Daniel wanted to consider what the writer is giving the reader. “What are you offering? A memoir or a story from life is, above everything, an offering to the reader. And I felt I had something to offer.”

What emerges is not just a quest for love and reconciliation, but for community.

Daniel teamed with woman-centered publisher Third Rail Press, dedicated to women’s stories that mainstream publishers deem too difficult or unmarketable — here, realistic depictions of sex and what Daniel calls “unconventional family arrangements that are not unhappy.” She was relieved the editors were on board: "I'm happy, really happy."

Daniel will discuss Girlfriending with Minneapolis-based novelist (and Daniel’s longtime friend) author Curtis Sittenfeld at 7 p.m. on Feb. 12 at the Central Library as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival.