The Audacious Roundup
The March selection for the Audacious Book Club is Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. We will be in conversation with Lamya on March 30th at 8 pm EST/5pm PST. Registration is now open! If you missed our conversation with Kashana, you can watch it online.
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 created 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.
And if you’re looking for some writing instruction, you might want to check out my Masterclass.
Greetings from the UK. I am on a train hurtling from Waverly Station in Edinburgh to London where I have a few more speaking events. On this side of the ocean, BBC presenter Gary Lineker made a reasonable comment on Twitter about the UK’s asylum policy and has been taken to task by the BBC for daring to not be impartial. It’s all part of this bizarre idea that journalists can’t express opinions during their free time. Also, he’s a sports journalist so his opinions on asylum won’t affect his professional impartiality.
Here is a conversation with me in the Evening Standard.
For The New York Times I wrote about Chris Rock’s new comedy special “Selective Outrage,” and how his response to Will Smith, a year later, was a failure.
Major drama has gone down in the Vanderpump Rules cinematic universe. Sandoval cheated on Ariana with Raquel!!!!! Like… what? This is just one of the most shocking things to happen which is saying something given the general character of the people we’re talking about. The cast is up in arms. Sandoval is licking his wounds. He and Raquel have maybe been carrying on for months and want to be together. Ariana is going to be fine but damn…they share a home. They’ve been together for like nine years.
At Rutgers, I am hosting a community writing workshop with two amazing keynotes, masterclasses and an editors & agents panel. It costs $50. Registration is open and space is limited.
Bad mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for reelection.
Some Black playwrights are pulling their work from theaters where theatre administrators have created shoddy environments.
A look at people who investigate the pasts and traumas of people who have been convicted and are on death row.
Hard-hitting journalism about a man who doesn’t wear shoes. At all.
The owner of Twitter remains classless and a walking strip of flypaper for lawsuits.
A profile of Natalie Petrzela, professor, podcaster, fitness expert?
This story about Agnes Callard’s marriages is quite… something. To each their own, and these are all grown folks, but it seems like there is a lot that is unexamined in this piece.
Some interesting things are happening right now in Korean feminist communities.
Every year, anonymous Oscar voters say wild shit about how they voted and why and it always reveal the inherent biases that shape the Oscars which remain so white, so straight, so male in certain categories.
Lindy West with a brutally frank (and correct) assessment of The Whale.
A profile of Penn Badgley who is amusing on TikTok.
Sharon Stone lost custody of her son because of her role in Basic Instinct where she was tricked into revealing her vulva by the filmmaker. SMH.
A look at WNYC’s cancellation of The Takeaway.
A Mexican drug cartel apologized for killing two of four kidnapped Americans.
Adults with too much time on their hands keep meddling in the affairs of high school drama students.
Apple is creating a standalone classical music app. Why? Who the hell knows.
I guess Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny are dating.
A Nebraska cheerleader competed alone in a team competition (the rest of the team quit because they had a basketball game or something) and still placed higher than her team, as a group, ever had before.
RIP Chaim Topol.
As Phantom of the Opera winds down, its musicians are losing the job they’ve had for, in some cases, decades. This is also probably the last time a musical will have such a large (27 musicians) orchestra and that is a shame.
An essay from Matthew Desmond on poverty.
This is a really sad story about the tragic murder of Jamea Harris and so many young lives ruined because of preventable gun violence.
Meghan and Harry’s kids will be known as Prince and Princess.
Why are there so few Black male teachers in NYC? That’s a good question, actually.
Did you know Ron DeSantis served at Guantanamo and was up to no good? Bring it up every time you hear his name.
The state of California is severing business ties with Walgreens.
Janet Jackson? Reality show? Excuse me… docuseries? Yes. YES.
Barnes & Noble, doing pretty well. Quite the turnaround.
On the amazing stunts in The Woman King.
A man asked Elon Musk on Twitter if he had been fired, because Twitter apparently has no HR department, and of course Musk was the biggest asshole imaginable to a guy who seems like one of the most decent people around.
An interview with Kelela.
Some of Marlon Wayans’s favorite things. He was pretty funny in talking about The Slap, unlike the victim of the slap.
Imani Perry on chronic pain, a lupus diagnosis and how abysmal healthcare can be for Black women.
What student debt relief would mean to 8 people. Short answer? Everything.
Patricia Lockwood wrote a new foreword to Virginia Woolf’s The Lighthouse.
A free grocery store in Atlanta is trying to address problems with food access.
Tyler Perry wants to maybe buy BET.
In Alabama, a girls basketball team beat a boys basketball team but the boys got the trophies for reasons I don’t quite understand.
John Warner offers a taxonomy of public writers.
RIP disability activist Judy Heumann.
We can’t have too many profiles of Jonathan Majors.
Ja Morant is having some troubles.
Jackson Mahomes stays messy and I don’t even understand why he behaves as he does. He… isn’t the superstar of his family (not that that would justify his actions).
Black equestrians want helmets that fit their heads so they can ride safely.
Two Black scholars have some ideas on saving the planet.
As an opponent of the death penalty, The Mercy Workers piece is a great lesson in the multi-dimensional facets of what makes a human being. Taking a life for another life is barbaric and is in no way a deterrent to crimes.
Yet, a murderer is a murderer, but before that they were babies, kids, teens, adults...they had lives, In many cases very complicated, tortured lives. Yes, most people don't go around murdering others because they had a hard childhood, but this article shows us how some can never move past childhood trauma, abuse, neglect. environment, prejudice and the gamut of societal ills.
We want murderers locked up but we don't need to kill them like animals in a slaughterhouse. In the case of Belcher's and many others, their lives may have value to others while serving life in prison.
All of us feminist have a bit of "badness" mixed in. Looking forward to the updated re-release.
Shortage of black male teachers is a nationwide problem. My daughters had ONE male black teacher from kindergarten to 12th grade in public school. Representation matters!!!
Slow 👏🏻 clap 👏🏻 for Lindy West.
Brilliant review.