Big Summer Mon, 21 Sep 2026 21:49:48 -0700 en © 2026 Big Summer yes e30adf96-b00d-5c97-b1f8-9cf4dbc37761 Allan Wiedenfeld episodic false “Everything is symbolic.”


In the spring of 1989, eighteen-year-old Allan Wiedenfeld began keeping a journal. He wrote about nearly everything: friendship and jealousy, sex and death, family and religion, books and bad decisions, McDonald’s and laundromats, Wisconsin and the places beyond it he imagined might contain another kind of life.


Over the next five months, the entries become the record of a life quietly changing shape. High school ends. His family grows more unstable. His younger brother gets into increasingly serious trouble. A trip to New York becomes a secret. Friendships intensify into something harder to define. And a relationship with another boy begins to force questions Allan can describe on the page long before he knows what to do with them.


Big Summer is a serialized memoir drawn from that journal, preserving the intelligence, absurdity, anxiety and startling intimacy of the original voice.


This isn’t 1989 remembered from a distance. It’s 1989 while it was still happening.


]]> Buzzsprout (https://www.buzzsprout.com) coming of age, memoir, 1980s, 1989, diary, personal journal, narrative nonfiction, queer coming of age, LGBTQ memoir, family, friendship, true story Allan Wiedenfeld https://storage.buzzsprout.com/h7hxun1bff2uaxxuvgsk5s34n33d?.jpg Big Summer Episode 2: The Red Button Episode 2: The Red Button California was supposed to feel different.

In Episode 2, Allan finally gets there: the Pacific at midnight, Hollywood, beaches, television studios, Tijuana, Disneyland—and a week alone with an aunt whose nonstop stories begin to wear away at the trip.

What starts as escape slowly becomes something stranger: a place where movie sets look smaller in person, landmarks refuse to be reached, and the California that Allan imagined begins to come apart under closer inspection.


]]> California was supposed to feel different.

In Episode 2, Allan finally gets there: the Pacific at midnight, Hollywood, beaches, television studios, Tijuana, Disneyland—and a week alone with an aunt whose nonstop stories begin to wear away at the trip.

What starts as escape slowly becomes something stranger: a place where movie sets look smaller in person, landmarks refuse to be reached, and the California that Allan imagined begins to come apart under closer inspection.


]]> Allan Wiedenfeld Buzzsprout-19843930 Mon, 21 Sep 2026 21:00:00 -0700 1815 1 2 full false Episode 1: The Cursed Trip Episode 1: The Cursed Trip In April 1989, eighteen-year-old Allan is about to leave Three Rivers, Wisconsin for California—but first there are family fights, a complicated friendship, a girlfriend he’s afraid to touch, and a growing conviction that the plane might crash.

Based on the journal I kept at eighteen, Big Summer is a coming-of-age memoir about friendship, family, obsession, escape, and the hope that somewhere else might be different.


]]> In April 1989, eighteen-year-old Allan is about to leave Three Rivers, Wisconsin for California—but first there are family fights, a complicated friendship, a girlfriend he’s afraid to touch, and a growing conviction that the plane might crash.

Based on the journal I kept at eighteen, Big Summer is a coming-of-age memoir about friendship, family, obsession, escape, and the hope that somewhere else might be different.


]]> Julius Buzzsprout-19832550 Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 -0700 1712 1 1 full false