What To Do When: An Illustrated Instruction Manual for Living in Human Society

At the Academy, Finck will work on her sixth book, What to Do When (Penguin Random House, 2025), a tongue-in-cheek instruction manual for living in human society. Her work is often about balancing the need to connect with others with the fear of being subsumed by a group—a paradox she plans to address directly. Each instruction will begin with the phrase “what to do when” and take different forms—one-liner, list, essay, diagram. Half actual self-help book, half poetic parody, What to Do When will offer advice on what to do when your doorbell rings unexpectedly, how to eat a messy sandwich in public, and what to do when you want to leave a party. Although her focus is on the minutiae of daily life, Finck will really be asking larger questions: What do we owe others, and what do we need from each other? What does it mean to belong to a city? A country? The species? The planet? How is it possible to be an individual and a member of society? During what will be her first visit to Germany, Finck plans to weave the history of the Hans Arnhold Center into the fabric of her book to explore the tension between the individual and the group, recalling the Weimar artists and cultural leaders who dared to question rules in service of truth and decency. “A seemingly light book of answers to small questions,” she writes, “What to Do When will really be a meditation on what it means to coexist with one another in a time of rapid social change.”