The Audacious Round Up
For the week of November 22nd and 29th
Sorry this is late, dear readers. It has been a year. I am presently in Antarctica which is, as you might imagine, very cold. Today I saw some penguins waddling in an adorable line. I also saw a glacier and zipped around an iceberg in a zodiac. There are lots of icebergs here in varying sizes.
Why Design Matters by Debbie Millman is available for pre-order. Yes, this link will be available in this newsletter until it goes on sale on on 2/22/22, four months after its original publishing date (damn supply chain).
The next Audacious Book Club selection is Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So. Sadly, Anthony passed away before his lovely book was published. But, we will have our conversation with his editor, Helen Atsma on December 15th at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST. Register now for that conversation.
Our conversations with Helen Hoang and Nicole Perkins are now up!
Tressie, Debbie Millman and I are hosting a writing workshop retreat in July 2022. You can also register for this if you want to spend a weekend with us.
Roxane Gay Books is closed to unagented submissions until 6/15/2022. I’ve found, I think, my first few books!
If you like what you read here, please consider subscribing. It allows me to support the Emerging Writer Series and the lovely editors who help me with this newsletter.
A recent art sale brings up long-standing questions about how to compensate artists from future sales of their work. This editorial, however, is a whole mess and it is strange to use this situation as the example to highlight this long-standing issue.
If you are looking for a lovely gift for folks in your life, from a black woman owned business, check out Apostrophe Puzzles. I have a couple of their puzzles and love them.
Michelle Goodwin wrote a haunting essay about being raped by her father as a child, and having an abortion at 12 when he made her pregnant. I am reminded of how often women need to bare their trauma, eloquently, to make society recognize that our lives matter, that we deserve autonomy, and that we absolutely need unfettered access to abortion, without having to explain or justify that choice. The Supreme Court hearing about the Mississippi abortion case was a travesty. That women’s lives can be controlled by nine political appointees and our elected leaders is a travesty. And we have so little recourse. People keep talking about underground abortion which will absolutely return, and the Lysistrata strategy of no longer fucking men so as to remove the danger of pregnancy, and so on, but it all requires women and other people with uteri to make sacrifices for our human rights. That said, stop fucking cisgender men if you have a uterus. It’s not worth it.
There’s something going on with baseball and a lockout. I don’t care about baseball but Kaitlyn does so I try to pay attention.
A loathsome question but it does need to be asked—do shooter drills for children really work? Do we really live in a society where we teach our children how to maybe not die at school?
Alex Baldwin says he didn’t fire the gun on the set of Rust.
Good news! Stacey Abrams is running for governor again. I hope she can use the infrastructure she and others created for 2016 to earn a victory here. If you live in Georgia, get to know her platform and vote for Abrams!
In very important news, the HGTV Dream Home has been unveiled and it is in Vermont this year. Beautiful home, beautiful gowns.
The Omarion variant has reached California shores. Keep those masks on and your hands sanitized, friends.
Virgil Abloh died from cancer at 41. It is a devastating loss. His final Louis Vuitton show was a bittersweet farewell to such a talented, innovative man. May he rest in power and may his family mourn in peace.
Philanthropist Jacqueline Avant was murdered in her home. So much tragedy.
New Jane Campion just dropped… on Netflix.
Look, we already knew Trump was incompetent, dumb, and evil, but the further we get from his presidency, the more we learn about the depths of terrible.
The New York Times has released their ten best books of 2021 (I release mine in January), as well as 100 notable books of the year. A couple of the Audacious Book Club books are on the list! We have good taste!
Alice Sebold has apologized (passively, ineffectively) to Anthony Broadwater, who was wrongly convicted of her rape, spent sixteen years in jail and then was on the sex offender registry, only to have that conviction finally overturned. Why? A movie producer working on an adaption of her memoir Lucky found too many discrepancies in the story, quit the project, and hired a private investigator to look into it. The more we learn about this story, the more fucked up it all is. Mr. Broadwater chose to not have children because he didn’t want to yoke them with the burden of stigma that cloaked him for most of his adult life. What has been taken from Mr. Broadwater is incalculable but she and her publisher best run him his money.
Speaking of grave injustice, Kevin Strickland has finally been freed.
A black man writes about his experiences with a white son. It’s… a lot.
Rachel Syme in conversation with Kathleen Turner.
A review of James Hannaham’s Pilot Impostor. I am intrigued.
Black excellence.
Boris Becker has a son. His name is Elias.
RIP Wakefield Poole, a gay porn pioneer. Onward!
Chris Cuomo was fired, finally.
A gay Santa commercial! It’s so sweet.
The Fugitive (2021).
A snowstorm, a pub, and an Oasis cover band.
A profile of the luminous, brilliant Natasha Rothwell. I love her work and her mind.
A conversation with George Clooney, still fine as hell, still has interesting things to say. I am excited for everything on her horizon.
How one writes about a subject really does matter. Take, for example, this bizarrely glowing piece about life at Guantanamo, the site of cruelty, torture, and inhumane detention. They liken it to a festive college campus like five times. Tell that to the people indefinitely imprisoned there. I am certain they don’t care about the sports and McDonald’s.
Stephen Sondheim died, at the age of 91. He lived a remarkable life and made remarkable music. I love his work and always will.
A playwright pulls her play from the Geffen Playhouse mid-run, because of shoddy everything. SMH.
Andrea Long Chu profiles Emily Ratajkowski and discusses Ratajkowski’s new memoir My Body.
White women are going hard for far right, white supremacist groups. This is not surprising. We’ve seen how they vote.
In The New Yorker, a lovely piece about Victoria Chang’s excellent poetry collection, Obit.
Botox, art, and the loss of facial expressions.
Egypt’s Avenue of The Sphinxes has reopened.
Camp Yoshi, if you’re into the outdoors and whatever.
Here’s a woman who is going to have to get rid of the entire husband. He simply cannot be fixed.
A profile of Keanu Reeves.
Eat. The. Rich. and start with Zuckerberg.
Keanu Reeves is still as FOINE as he was 25 years ago when he was on my teenage bedroom wall.
Love these round-ups! Please also let us know about next year’s book club? I’m eager to plan out next year’s reads!