hello friends

when i told my friends that i wanted to start a newsletter, they encouraged me. they said it’d be a great way to flex my essay muscles and fall into a routine. i can understand why they thought i’d be publishing essays. it’s the main form i work in and the substack-y mode du jour. maybe i’m a snob about self-publishing or maybe i’m too precious about my craft but i dread the idea of disseminating any serious thoughts via email and without the eyes of an editor. i could use some help with establishing a regular writing practice though. i’m getting tired of my “only writing when inspired” thing. it makes it hard to publish more than once a presidential term. so here is something more low-key and less perfectionistic. you can tell that this is a low-key thing because i am writing entirely in lowercase, which is what cool girls do.

i’m self-conscious about the way this comes across. it’s easy to forget the inherent narcissism of posting when you’re on a platform like twitter or instagram where everyone is doing it. there’s plausible deniability that you’re playing to the audience. asking people to subscribe to a newsletter about my life makes that self-interest more naked. i want to believe this is more thoughtful, more authentic. maybe not, but you might like me more here.

regardless, i do have a lot to say outside of the confines of the work i scrupulously polish. not everything is lit mag material, no matter how achingly brilliant and original every thought i have is. it’s nothing special of course, and mostly about me, but at least you don’t have to go on twitter dot com to read it, a site i’m trying to wean myself off. a while ago i made a normal (maybe slightly annoying) contribution to a tweet by a writer i liked. she didn’t like my tone, i apologized. i felt weird after, like i’d let myself get pushed around, and tweeted something about how everyone on twitter is wired to be belligerent. she was subtweeting me shortly after. i’m of a weak constitution and i’d had a bad week, so obviously i lost it over the little words in my phone.

i asked my partner if we could uber home because “there’s little in this world less dignified than crying on the subway”. i’m not sure why i thought dignity was the point here. this was after i paid $30 to lose every game in a magic: the gathering event.

it’s hard to stay away from twitter. it’s hard to find other people who know what “taco bell quarterly harangued a paris review lackey at awp” means. this january, i was selected to be a 2024 periplus fellow alongside 47 other emerging writers. the opportunity for mentorship and the name check on lit hub were both cool but i was most excited for the community. one of my fellow cohort members, summer farah, recently hosted a reading with dina abdulhadi, nancy huang, and kamelya omayma youssef. summer read from her new book and the house sparrows would not stop screeching over her but you couldn’t drown the poetry. everyone was radiant and brimming with affection for each other. i got food at a báhn mi place that was out of bread (reportedly, this happens a lot) with another peripal (as we’re called) and talked for an hour or two. later i looked up rental prices on streeteasy for prospect heights and sighed. anyway, it gives me hope that someday i might log off for good and enter the post-social media era. i have been floating the idea of a forum though. exercise that god complex a bit.

one more thing. in addition to the diaristic tone, i want this newsletter to act as a bit of a field guide to new york city from the eyes of mid-20s wannabe literary socialite. i don’t have specialized knowledge, and i don’t drink at cool bars unless they have mocktails, but i do know some things. this might come in the form of event announcements or spots that you should know about. also some outfits. i need to show someone my outfits.

bird of honor

i’m a baby birdwatcher (a nestling, if you will) so please enjoy learning about new birds with me or revisiting old favorites

a friend of mine who recently moved to california posted a video of a gorgeous female allen’s hummingbird a while back. they’re west coast birds through and through, but they’ve split into two subspecies. one subspecies goes to mexico for the winter, while the other stays put in california all year. they’re stocky and coppery and sound like what i can only describe as a “motorbike speeding but kind of shy about it”.

thank you for reading,

laura