An Audacious Two Years

A new milestone for The Audacity newsletter

The past two years have been a blur for many reasons, most less than ideal, but one joyful constant has been creating and being part of this audacious community. I didn’t know what to expect when I started this newsletter but I did know how much I once loved blogs and how much I missed having a place to share thoughts that were longer than 140 or 280 characters but that I didn’t necessarily want to share with the whole wide world.

I’ve been able to talk about books I love and publish incredible words from emerging writers including an essay that appears in Best American Essays 2023. Because of your subscriptions, each emerging writer is paid $2,000 for their work. [If you want to submit your work, guidelines and the submission portal can be found at gay.submittable.com.] I’ve written about my sweet little family and the brutal consequences of white men having bad days and cultural hysteria about fatness and how picky an eater my puppy Max is, and the mythical construction of borders, and Just Like That, the Sex and the City reboot, and visiting the Poilâne bakery in Paris with my adorable niece Parker, and the silliness of the new Top Gun which was very much like the old Top Gun, and the challenge of dealing with unsolicited feedback that gnaws at your worst fears about yourself, and remembering Jina “Mahsa” Amini whose murder sparked ongoing protests in Iran, and weekly roundups of interesting things from across the Internet.

I had the privilege of publishing a series of essays about guaranteed basic income and an incredible essay on loss from Meg Pillow, who helps edit The Audacity. Substack was generous enough to sponsor a one-year fellowship named for my beloved brother Joel, and I’ve worked with three incredible writers—Jet Toomer, Elspeth Michaels, and Jesus Rodriguez as they’ve created newsletters of their own and grown into who they are as writers even more. Each month, Aubrey Hirsch has entertained and educated and sometimes horrified us with her insightful and incisive graphic essays.

For better or worse, I have a lot of creative and intellectual interests and I am grateful that The Audacity can serve as a home for those interests. I’m looking forward to seeing how this community evolves over the next year. You can expect more essays from me and more round ups and monthly book club discussions. The Emerging Writer Series will continue. Soon I will be starting a few new features: live chats with paid subscribers, and office hours, one on one meetings (for a fee), to discuss things writing or publishing related. And I always welcome your feedback on what you might want.

The Audacity would not thrive without each and every reader of this newsletter so thank you for the past two years and the future to come.