About Group Living and Other Recipes:
Every week, there are dozens of news articles about the loneliness epidemic, the friendship recession, and how housing costs are pricing everyone from Gen Z to retirees out of the housing market.
Perfectly timed for this moment in our culture, Lola Milholland brings a fascinating perspective on what we can gain when we share our living spaces. Thoughtful, quirky, candid, and wise, Group Living and Other Recipes provides a convincing case that “now is always the right time to reimagine home and family”—and introduces a singular writer who combines the heady, of-the-moment perception of Priya Parker and Jenny Odell with the arresting memoir chops of Gabrielle Hamilton.
Lola had a lively upbringing in the nineties as the child of iconoclastic hippies. Her mom—energetic and intense at work and at play—had spent her life revolting against the strictures of her American and Filipino upbringing. Her dad, a child of the eastern Oregon desert, was a jovial documentary filmmaker and historian who loved to collect ephemera. Both threw open the doors of the Holman House, their rambling home in Portland, Oregon, to long-term visitors and unusual guests. Years later, Milholland moved in with her brother and his housemates—an eccentric group of stop-motion animators and accomplished cooks—bringing the tradition of experimental communal living into a new generation.
In Lola’s capable hands, the Holman House comes to life in radiant and dazzling ways—from transcendent meals and ecstatic parties to colorful characters coming together in moments of deep tenderness and inevitable irritation. In addition to her Holman House experiences, Lola takes you all over the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and Japan to offer an expansive and vibrant reevaluation of the structures at the very center of our lives.
Author bio:
Lola Milholland is a food business owner, social-practice artist, and writer. Her work has been published by The Guardian, Gastronomica, Oregon Humanities, Meatpaper, Compound Butter, and others. A former editor for Edible Portland magazine, she lives in Portland, Oregon, and runs Umi Organic a noodle company committed to providing nutritious public-school lunches. More info is available about about Lola at Lolasbeef.com and groupliving.substack.com