See you in Brooklyn and on TV, plus new writing classes and link love roundup
I'll be at The Other Art Fair and interviewed on a major TV network
This is my newsletter about my life, interests, and work, including my books, writing, and classes. To show your support consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. For $5/month or $50/year, paid subscribers get access to my full archives. I hope you’ll also check out my Substack personal essay publication Open Secrets, which publishers an original essay every week.
Lest I be accused of burying the lede, where to find me over the next few days, from today, Thursday, May 18 through Sunday, May 21, is at Booth 55 of The Other Art Fair at Brooklyn Navy Yard. I’ll be helping my boyfriend, Drew Griffiths, with his booth selling his abstract art. I went with him to a different art fair in November and had a great time. There will be 120 independent artists, food trucks, DJs, and lots more. You can use code 20DREW for 20% off admission. I lived in Brooklyn for 13 years, and am looking forward to being back and to getting to see lots of old friends and family. Come say hi if you’re in town and want to check out some art!
Another artist showing work at The Other Art Fair who I recommend is Alise Loebelsohn. I discovered her work in November and bought a print that I adore that now hangs on the wall on my staircase.
My other big news that, barring any breaking news stories that pre-empt it, Drew and I will be interviewed this Sunday, May 21, on CBS Sunday Morning. Reporter Susan Spencer came to our house in April to interview us. What’s it about? I can’t tell you, you’ll have to watch! Check your local listings for times, or else you should be able to watch it on the CBS site or the show’s YouTube channel. I’ll post it here too as a separate post and probably everywhere else. How did this come about? A producer for the show contacted me based on a personal essay I wrote many years ago. Life is funny that way, isn’t it?
I also posted new writing classes for June:
June 11, 1-3 pm ET, Essay Writing 101. $25/person. Limited to 20 people. In this class, based on my extensive experience having written dozens of essays, op-eds and columns for publications including The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, DAME, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Salon, SELF, The Village Voice, and more, and as editor of personal essay publication Open Secrets, students learn about what makes a powerful essay, how to write ethically about people in your life, how to create a narrative arc, and how and where to submit essays, plus writing to six specific prompts tailored to nationwide essay markets, with personalized feedback. Additionally, students receive access to a list of 50+ essay markets plus writing guidelines upon registration, and after class receive an invitation to my essay writing class alumni Private Slack channel and can submit work to my paying ($100/essay) personal essay publication Open Secrets any time. Want to know what students are saying about the class? See testimonials here. And I can tell you that two days after a recent class, a student sold an essay started in class for many times the cost of the class.
June 17, 3-5 pm ET, Essay Writing 101. $25/person. Limited to 50 people. In this writing workshop Rachel Kramer Bussel, professional erotica writer, author of the nonfiction guide How to Write Erotica, and editor of over 70 erotica anthologies, such as The Big Book of Orgasms, Come Again: Sex Toy Erotica and the Best Women’s Erotica of the Year series, will take you through the ins and outs of modern erotic writing. Learn how to get started, find your voice, and write against type. You’ll discover how to incorporate everyday scenarios as well as outlandish fantasies into your writing, and make them fit for particular publications. She’ll also talk about submitting your work and keeping up with the thriving erotica market, including anthologies, ebooks and print books, apps, magazines and websites, as well as getting started with self-publishing, creating a pseudonym and building your author brand. Please have paper and writing implements or a computer to use for writing exercises. A bibliography with erotica resources will be provided.
I wanted to share what I hope will be a weekly feature of links to things I’m reading. This one is extra long because I’ve been gathering them for three weeks and haven’t had a chance to compile them here. I was inspired by two other Substacks I highly recommend, Roxane Gay’s
and by Rachel Baker and Maggie Bullock. Both are ones I always eagerly open and find myself clicking and clicking and clicking. As I get less and less traction on my Twitter account, which used to be and largely still is my preferred social media platform (I’ve been on it since 2007), I’m hoping to find other avenues to share what I’m thinking about. FYI, I joined Twitter Blue specifically to launch this Change.org petition asking Twitter to add body size to its hateful conduct policy’s protected categories.So without further ado, some links:
I interviewed romance novelist Thien-Kim Lam on her novels Happy Endings and Full Exposure, writing Korean American characters, and how she got into the romance genre
I interviewed the hosts of the Multiamory podcast and authors of the new book Multiamory about polyamory, relationship boundaries and check-ins, and more
The rise of celebrity book imprints
Illinois is set to become the first state to make book bans illegal (I so hope other states follow; the book banning has gotten out of control and is truly sad and scary in its anti-intellectualism and anti-literacy efforts, along with its racism, homophobia, and overall ignorance)
E. Jean Carroll bought me a dress - I admit I didn’t read this Bethany Schneider essay at Avidly, a section of the Los Angeles Review of Books, at first because the title somewhat intrigued me, but not enough to click. I’m so glad I did, via, I believe, the aforementioned The Spread newsletter. It’s about advice columnist and (I believe) rape survivor and Trump lawsuit victor E. Jean Carroll, but it’s also about mentorship and compassion in the workplace, the fashion magazine industry, gender roles and sexuality, not fitting in at work, and finding one’s place via fashion
A Tall Stack of Projects by Caitlin Kunkel at
gave me a lot to think about in terms of my approach to my seemingly endless work projectsThe New York Times Vows section writeup of Kim France’s wedding - I remember reading Kim France in Sassy back in the day. Now she’s the co-host of the podcast Everything is Fine. I don’t regularly read the Vows section but I came across this link on France’s website Girls of a Certain Age, which is down at the moment but I’m linking to it assuming it’ll be back up soon. This part impressed me. It was so casual, but when was the last time you saw a straight fat man just own that? Or a fat woman outside of specific body positive circles? That felt subtle but revolutionary in its way.
Ms. France, who goes by Kim, agreed to the plan, but told Mr. Green that his search would uncover her age, which wasn’t listed on the app. “Just so you know, I’m older than you,” she texted him days before their April 10 meeting in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. He had no problem with that and fired back a caveat of his own: “I’m fat,” he texted.
By the time the sun was filtering through the windows of her Prospect Heights apartment on April 11, they were a couple.
This
post by Kim France has more about her.Stiffed podcast hosted by Everything is Fine co-host Jennifer Romolini - I cannot stress how good this podcast is! If you’re curious about media, feminism, the 1970s, porn, writing, publishing, Anna Wintour, Bob Guccione, or any of the above, check it out. My old Penthouse editor Peter Bloch is interviewed on multiple episodes, and it made me realize that while I had access to old issues of Penthouse when I worked at Penthouse Variations from 2004-2011, I never saw a copy of Viva, as far as I know. This podcast made me want to read them all! Here’s the official description:
“Bob Guccione, founder of the men’s magazine Penthouse, is about to drop his latest project, and it’s not quite what anyone is expecting. Enter Viva, an erotic magazine for women published by a porn king but staffed by – drumroll – a bunch of feminist writers and editors. Viva features groundbreaking full-frontal male nudes, writing by feminist icons like Betty Friedan, and profiles of literary legends like Maya Angelou. Its cover stars include Bianca Jagger and Shelley Duvall. Anna Wintour was even Viva’s fashion editor at one point. But what is originally conceived as a high-end, progressive, sexual utopia for women… doesn’t quite turn out that way.”
The Active Voice podcast hosted by Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie - I haven’t listened to all the episodes yet but I’ve greatly enjoyed the ones I have, especially the Samantha Irby interview. She had a lot of powerful things to say about day jobs, writing, criticism, and more. I haven’t read it yet but her new essay collection Quietly Hostile looks excellent and is high on my TBR (to be read) list. And Samantha Irby has the excellently named Substack
where she writes, among other thing, a newsletter about who’s on judge mathis today and as you’ll hear in the podcast interview, the judge knows about it!Comedian Hari Kondabolu’s standup special Vacation Baby on YouTube - I just saw him do comedy in Vermont and it felt like such a welcome homecoming for me as a comedy fan. So I immediately went to YouTube to watch this one. There’s a lot here about parenting and identity and I was especially impressed to hear someone talking about being part of couple and having a baby and not being married. It’s so rare that I come across that.
I’m sure I could go on and on and on, but I’ll close this here as I have to get ready to head to Brooklyn. See you there and on TV!