The Audacious Roundup
For the weeks of December 15th and December 22nd
AUDACIOUS BOOKCLUB HAPPENINGS
Our January selection is Hitch by Sara Levine. We will have a live book club discussion with Sara on January 22nd at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST. Registration is open! I hope to see many of you there. For newcomers, there is a bookclub FAQ if you have questions about how it all works. We’re partnering with the lovely people at Allstora for the Audacious Book Club. Now, you can sign up to have the monthly selections delivered to your doorstep each month! Otherwise, I’ve put together an Audacious Book Club storefront if you want to buy current or forthcoming book club titles.
THE NEWSLETTER WEEK IN REVIEW
PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL NEWS
I had the pleasure of appearing on KQED with Savala Nolan and Irin Carmon to talk about the year in feminism. It was a great conversation though we were talking about not-great things.
If you have an interest, I’m judging the Craft Literary essay contest. Submissions are open until January 25th.
Thanks to you guys and other readers, The Portable Feminist Reader is a NYT bestseller! So thank you! And if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, there’s still time! (And there will always be time, it’s a book.) And check out Love Letter to a Garden, by Debbie Millman.
Book and project buying links: Books I’ve Written, RGB Imprint Titles, Rebind: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
READING MATERIAL
If you’re in NYC and want to see if your street has been plowed, there’s a tool for that.
Where did pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s wealth come from? The NYT investigated.
The regime is trying to ban healthcare for trans children. It is cruel, macabre, and unconscionable.
Then, the president spent 20 minutes breathlessly yelling at America about how awesome everything is and how he has ended 8 wars and so on. He has expanded his ridiculous and racist travel bans. Not to be outdone, he renamed the Kennedy Center The Trump The Kennedy Center, the signage has already changed, and it is half-assed. I wish I was joking.
In their ongoing quest to do evil things, the regime is going to start garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers in default.
Some of the migrants who self-deported have not received the $1,000 payment they were promised.
The man who committed a mass shooting at Brown also committed a murder at MIT and then he ended his own life. A Reddit post helped track him down because the current version of the FBI is in the hands of an absolute idiot.
The Supreme Court blocked a National Guard deployment to Chicago.
Karoline Leavitt is pregnant. WHO CARES?
The Lumbee Tribe will be federally recognized.
Elise Stefanik is leaving politics. The timing is curious. Wonder what’s going on. Along those lines, Marjorie Taylor Greene is still on her not quite redemption tour where she is the same noxious person she has always been but now with some criticism of Trump.
In better news, Mamdani’s transition team is sorting through 72,000 resumes as they staff the next mayoral administration. Mine is maybe one of them.
What it’s like at the ICE job expo… (Grim.)
Epstein files keep appearing and disappearing. Many of them were also very badly redacted. And there are many more to be released, yet.
Another day, another story about how billionaires are going to leave a great place because they might have to spend a tiny bit more in taxes. THEY AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE.
Oh now Mitt Romney wants to tax the rich? Okay, bro.
The University of Oklahoma removed a teaching assistant for giving a student who did a lousy job on a paper the grade that paper deserved.
A tale of two cities dealing with homelessness in very different ways.
Bari Weiss continues to do whatever it is she is trying to do at CBS. At the last minute, she pulled a 60 Minutes story but as is the case in these circumstances, the story got out anyway!
The Kansas City Chiefs are leaving Arrowhead Stadium for a new stadium in Kansas. It is amazing how billionaires get people to pay for stuff for them.
RIP James Ransone. RIP Betty Reid Soskin.
Care work can be so thankless but nannying, particularly for well-to-do families, seems particularly fraught. And along those lines, ish, the cost of childcare in the city is really high.
This story about Chinese billionaires creating mega-families via surrogacy is… really dystopian. Also, sometimes, surrogacy doesn’t work out so well for the surrogates.
Tech bros are going to etiquette school to learn how to interact with other humans.
Want to get a job? Be hot!
Remember that Coldplay lady on the KissCam? She wants to share her side of the story.
There is truly nothing private equity won’t ruin.
The last of the Dionne triplets has died.
This was an interesting piece about the egalitarian vision of nativity scenes.
The Oscars are moving to YouTube in 2029, which… sure. Okay? Lots of people watch things on YouTube so this isn’t a harbinger of doom. It’s just… interesting.
It is a difficult time to be a film/TV writer. I suspect, for most people, it has always and will always be a difficult industry to break into but still, points are being made here.
A review of American Canto.
Meet ye olde cooking influencers.
The Rockettes are 100 and maybe need to work on the dancing a bit.,
An angry white man is suing Playwright’s Horizons for offering a ticket discount for people of color. Bring back hobbies!
Jake Paul got his ass beat.
Jewish Currents is looking for a new editor!
I really enjoyed the gay hockey show and the stars give fun little interviews.
Is cabbage the hot food for 2026? I don’t know, but anything other than kale is okay by me.
This is just… creepy.
A roundup of things people stuck in their orifices this year.
THE RUMPUS WEEKS IN REVIEW
Essays:
House of Three Rooms by Kathryn Brittany Jackson
On Nature Writing, Growing up an Indoor Kid, and Walmart as Landscape by Katiy Heath
The Rumpus, Redesigned by Roxane Gay
Fiction:
The Femcel Catalog a.k.a. The Annals of Obsession by Lydia Wei
Reviews:
A Review of Remica Bingham-Risher’s Room Swept Home by Chisaraokwu Asomugha, MD
On “Things in Nature Merely Grow” by Yiyun Li by Muriel Leung
Interviews:
A Conversation with Issa Quincy by Alyssa Oursler
A Conversation with Quiara Alegría Hudesby Ursula Villarreal-Moura
Wishing for a kinder 2026. Happy New Year!
Roxanne, I haven't read any of your always wonderful links yet, but I don't want to miss thanking you for recommending Bailey Hikawa's phone cases in your holiday gift post. I ordered one mainly because I was fascinated by them as art objects. I never expected to use it much. But from the first minute that I put the Ishi case on my phone and held it in my hands, I knew I'd never go back to regular phone cases.
This is my favorite discovery of 2025 in terms of something that combines art, function, and enhanced accessibility. I have mild osteoarthritis in my hands and can't hold a phone in a regular case for very long before the my joints start to ache. Even leaving arthritis aside, the unergonomic slab shape of cellphones strains the tendons of my hands.
(Parenthetically, how irritating is it that Apple makes gorgeous phones that are so slippery one has to immediately put them in some kind of case that hides their beauty?!?)
The pleasant-feeling silicone of the Bailey Hikawa case and its various bumps enable me to securely pick it up and hold it without effort. A feature of the ergonomic shape is that I tend to naturally shift the positions of my hands as I read in a way that keeps the joints from feeling stressed.
I guess the added depth wouldn't work if you don't carry a purse, but it's about time there was a phone case for those of us who have purses rather than pockets. I highly recommend these to anyone who doesn't always carry their phones in their pocket or use tiny purses.
Can't thank you enough, Roxanne! Wishing everyone all the best for New Year 2026!