The Audacious Round Up
For the week of January 10th and 17th
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 January selection for The Audacious Book Club is Noor by Nnedi Okorafor. We will be in conversation with Nnedi on January 25th at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST. Register, now, for that conversation. Our February pick is To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara and you might want to start reading now because it is a lengthy tome. Here are some reviews: NYT, NPR, Vulture. That last one is… rough but it’s worth reading different perspectives on the book. We will have much to discuss. And here is a review of our February selection, How High We Go in the Dark.
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. We hope to see you there! It will be fun and more.
On January 28th, at 1 p.m. PST, I will be in virtual conversation with Bernardine Evaristo about her latest book, Manifesto. Tickets are now available!
Roxane Gay Books is closed to unagented submissions until 6/15/2022. I’ve found, I think, my first few books! I am open to agented submissions so please send me great books! I am also open, again, for 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.
In other personal news, the podcast I co-hosted with Tressie, Hear to Slay, will now be The Roxane Gay Agenda. Tressie is taking time to focus on her writing and NYT column so I am going solo. I will definitely miss her. She’s an amazing producing/hosting partner, but I am looking forward to this new adventure. First episode drops on 1/25, and now, each episode will be available exclusively on Luminary for the first week, and will be available wherever you enjoy podcasts from the following week onward.
In this week’s Work Friend, generational differences, a reappearing ghost, pretty privilege, and unreasonable burdens during the interview process. If you have a workplace question, send it along to workfriend@nytimes.com. I’m listening. And here is an interview with me in W Magazine.
A new comic from Aubrey Hirsch about women and people with uteri and bodily autonomy, and how we are still fighting for these rights.
Why did Keisha Lance Bottoms decide not to run for re-election? I certainly wondered because she seemed like she was on such a great trajectory.
We are seeing more Asian Best Friends in film & television and while it’s representation, it is certainly not the robust representation the Asian community deserves.
Linda Holmes wrote a wonderful remembrance of Betty White.
Forgot to mention this last week, but Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty. Do the prince next!
Marian Chia-Ming Liu writes about the power in reclaiming her Asian name.
There are a lot of interracial couples on our screens but have you noticed that they rarely, if ever, talk about their racial differences and experiences as interracial couples?
If you like making puzzles, The New York Times, has a diverse crossword puzzle constructor fellowship. Apply!
The always interesting Emily Gould profiles Anna Marie Tendler for Harper’s Bazaar.
Prince Andrew has finally had to give up his military titles and patronages and he cannot be referred to as His Royal Highness in public settings? Or something? I don’t fully understand how all that works but His Royal Predator is reaping what he has long sown.
The Millions has shared their annual round up of interesting book releases for the first half of the year.
Marvelous microsculptures. How do they make such tiny art? I love it.
When Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East…
This profile of Joss Whedon, which he… wanted, makes him look even more TERRIBLE than he already did. He comes across as arrogant, delusional, ridiculous, racist, predatory and not very smart. YIKES. But kudos to the writer. It’s so well done.
Jamilah Lemieux has written an excellent, incisive essay on Dave Chappelle, and the way people perpetuate the notion that no one has suffered more in this world than black men.
In his newsletter Sweater Weather, Brandon Tyler wrote a meaty, intriguing essay on the trauma plot, engaging with Parul Sehgal’s essay in The New Yorker and then going beyond that work. Well worth a read.
Sex after 70? What’s it like? This piece gets into.
The real MVP of professional sports? The Porta Potty and the people who maintain them.
A one-semester endowed chair position in creative writing at Scripps College.
No one does a headline better than Bossip. Periodt.
A man held congregants in a synagogue hostage for 11 hours. They were freed. He was killed by police.
Have you been watching Yellowjackets? I am four episodes in and loving it. One of the show’s great pleasures is seeing Christina Ricci playing a truly confounding, fascinating character. See also: Melanie Lynskey.
I guess railroad car bandits are a thing now.
Wikipedia won’t classify NFTs as art.
Teenagers are creating banned book clubs. Reading gangs. The kids are alright!
A profile of Patrisse Cullors.
Put some respekt on Audre Lorde’s name.
RIP Terry Teachout, a wonderful cultural critic and beloved friend to many.
You can order COVID tests (4 per household per month, I think) from the USPS/government.
On David Simon and copaganda.
Morgan Wallen is trying to come back even though he never really went away.
Book banning is all the rage again.
Several high profile hosts have left NPR recently. What’s going on there? Well, NPR takes a look.
Hanif Abdurraqib profiles Steph Curry.
Wordle as good pedagogy.
Brandon Tyler’s newsletter echoes McConnell’s African Americans vote as much as Americans (white ppl) line. Toni Morrison was soooo right- whites are Americans every else has to hyphenate. I hate that Hanya is othered here as if she’s not fully human/American cause she’s not white ergo cannot write a great American novel. Fuck slickly worded NYTs intellectualized racism!
From Brandon:
Literature is not immune to this fixation on biography and identity. Far from it. So much of the contemporary cultural response to literature is predicated on turning that literature into biography. A recent review of Hanya Yanagihara’s new novel To Paradise, in The New York Times, opens:
Can an Asian American woman write a great American novel? Ought a great American novel range from New York to Hawaii, skipping the Midwest? Can it cross from realism to dystopia? And — most important of all, perhaps — can it center on gay men?
Thanks for the heads up on the length of TO PARADISE! Went ahead and bought it instead of waiting for the library. I also appreciate the months-ahead book club selections so I can place holds. Thank you! I greatly enjoyed NOOR and look forward to Tuesday's discussion.