The Audacious Round Up
Keep up with the Joel Gay Creative Fellows, Jet Toomer, Jesus Rodriguez, and Elspeth Michaels.
The November selection for the Audacious Book Club is Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer. Our conversation with Andrew takes place on November 17th at 8pm EST/5 pm PST and registration is open. If you missed this week’s conversation with Lola Ogunyemi, you can watch it on YouTube.
I am reading submissions to The Audacity’s Emerging Writer Series. Read the guidelines and submit your best writing. Submissions will be open until I have 24 essays.
Don’t Forget: Why Design Matters by Debbie Millman.
Debbie also has a new project, The Remarkable Life Deck, if you want to think through what the next decade of your life could look like. The cards are really beautiful and this is such a valuable exercise for looking ahead and taking stock of where you are. I don’t say that lightly. Normally, this isn’t my kind of thing but The Remarkable Life Deck is excellent.
If you’re looking for a nice notebook, check out my new Draft Writing Journal from Baron Fig. It’s pretty swank if I do say so myself AND back in stock.
Hilary Swank is living her best life on 168 acres in rural Colorado. The house is stunning.
Wakanda Forever is thriving at the box office. Winston Duke is a king among men.
If you’re looking for a personal trainer, either in Los Angeles or anywhere via Zoom, my amazing trainer Sarah has openings for new clients. You can find her on instagram at @saraolivebergeson.
There has been another mass shooting. A gay bar in Colorado Springs, CO. Five people are dead and eighteen are injured. The worst hypocrites who created a toxic, homophobic atmosphere, are offering thoughts and prayers though we all know where they can shove those thoughts and prayers. We are once again reminded that nowhere is safe, not anymore, and for many of us, it never has been. There were also mass shootings at UVA and in Moscow, ID.
There are bizarre things that can only happen in the dankest corners of the internet. I give you, Chilligate.
A non-fiction creative writing fellowship at Colgate.
Margot Robbie graces the cover of Vanity Fair.
Hammer and Hope is a new magazine of black politics and culture created by some incredible thinkers. Yes, I am absolutely signing up.
A (racist) neighbor called the police on a young Black girl catching lantern flies. But she got to go to Yale to see some interesting research and meet Black women scientists.
A beautiful, immersive piece on Octavia Butler.
Carrying out executions, as you might expect, exacts a price from the people who carry them out.
There are places in the world where people are forced to live and work in extreme heat. This was an interesting look at how they survive it.
The World Cup has started and there is a fan village that is giving Fyre Festival.
The UFC guy wants to start a slap fighting league. End times, truly.
Yellowstone is back. Love the show but boy do they have a strange sense of the world and how it works. A look at the best character on the show (Beth, obvi).
Twitter remains incredibly chaotic. Musk offered his employees an ultimatum. Stay and become hardcore as part of Twitter 2.0 or leave with three months of severance. Jokes on him. Half of the remaining employees, or more, including the entire payroll department took him up on that offer. Until it has a better handle on the new Twitter landscape, CBS News is suspending its Twitter operations. Also Musk is trying to repopulate the world or something, with mini-mes. Advertisers are fleeing the site and Eli Lilly is pissed because a fake tweet cost them billions. Heh. That part is funny.
Speaking of scams, the fallout from the collapse of FTX continues. The company has declared bankruptcy and their books are a mess. Sam Bankman-Fried and his little friends were playing a game with other people’s money, and don’t seem all that concerned with the consequences. And hey, they made a bunch of political donations—nothing to see here.
Shanquella Robinson went to Cabo with “friends'“ and died within twenty-four hours. Now, police are trying to figure out what happened because it wasn’t “alcohol poisoning” like her “friends” claim.
Fraud Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to eleven years in prison.
The AT&T Time Warner merger is kind of a mess. And they’re messing with my stories.
A conversation with Bokeem Woodbine.
Joan Didion’s estate had a sale.
RIP John Aniston aka Victor Kiriakis, the man of our mothers’ dreams.
How new musical Kimberly Akimbo was brought to life.
Andrew Scott writes about leaving academia after twenty year as a contingent faculty member.
Staff members in the Harper Collins union have gone on strike for better pay and working conditions and they aren’t asking for much. Workers in the UC system are also striking.
The winners of the 2022 National Book Awards have been announced.
A conversation with Keke Palmer.
Brittney Griner has been taken to a penal colony in Mordovia. And she still isn’t home though she should be.
A profile of Tenoch Huerto Mejía. Fine as he wants to be.
On Brendan Fraser’s comeback…. I have very mixed feelings about The Whale but he seems like a wonderful man and I love his work.
An open letter in support of Amber Heard.
A professor’s job is never done.
Magic Mike III, out in February. My body is ready.
Predictably, Trump is running in 2024. IDGAF except that he could still win again even if some people say he can’t. We thought that the last time and look what happened.
Meta (LOL) has just finished a round of layoffs and it’s clear that whatever ambitions they had in the news space are over, now that they have decimated journalism.
A look at how playwright Will Arbery writes.
A review of Fleishman is In Trouble, which I have really enjoyed thus far. The novel was pretty good, too.
A profile of Zoe Kravitz.
Sexual predator Eric Weinberg was enabled in many ways for many years.
Beautiful Bonsai.
Two new bookstores in Brooklyn!
Dave Chappelle hosted SNL and used the opportunity to be weird and antisemitic in a veiled/not so veiled way.
A hundred books you should not miss in 2022.
The last link to the book list doesn't work
We can never get too emotionally tired to be outraged about ALL the shootings taking place in America today. Now, people ask: "how many dead" as if the size of their indignation depends on the number of lives lost. Prayers and thoughts will not help the victims in that Colorado Springs shooting, or any shooting. What will help is gun reform, acceptance, tolerance and just plain leave people the f**k alone.
That piece on Octavia is like my story, the part about how important the public libraries were in her life. As a voracious reader, I was book-starved in Haiti with no libraries. In America, I practically lived at the Boston public library after getting my first library card. I never take owning a book for granted. I still marvel that I can afford to buy books to read now and admire them on my bookshelf.
Chilligate: People need to get a life! smh!
FREE BG already!!!