Whenever I feel untethered, I turn to other people’s writing. When I feel stuck and can’t write, I read. This practice has always felt grounding. Though it doesn’t make me immune to a negative thought spiral, usually I’m able to keep them at bay by leaning on other people’s words.
I suppose this is kind of a spiritual sequel to my post, “On saying the quiet part loud,” published in July 2020, in which I shared some of the writers that were getting me through the year. This time, I want to talk about the writers who’ve inspired me to return to this newsletter and make it a priority.
The words of these writers, in particular, have helped me tap into certain ideas and parse them. They’ve helped me become more aware of my body and how I move in this world, reminding me to notice when certain thoughts and feelings arise and note how they feel, which emotions come up when I turn them over.
My favorite newsletters are the ones that are deeply personal. Maybe it’s because they take me back to my Livejournal era, a time when I knew the intimate details of the lives of strangers. Back then, that kind of writing made me feel less alone. These days, it helps me quell my imposter syndrome and makes being vulnerable a little less scary.
Sometime last year, I started caring about fashion again. My boyfriend had become obsessed with a few menswear YouTubers and would watch their videos on our TV. Somehow, his newfound interest rubbed off on me, and I started becoming more thoughtful about how I put my outfits together. It was around that same time that I came across Viv Chen’s newsletter, The Molehill.
Chen’s perspective is singular and well-honed. Her writing is confident and razor-sharp. A staunch advocate of slow fashion and second-hand shopping, Chen believes that thrifting can be more than just a sustainable lifestyle choice; it’s an opportunity to develop your style in a way that shopping retail doesn’t really allow room for.
Her writing has given me the confidence to be bolder and more playful about how I dress, and it’s empowered me in a way I think I needed, and for that I’m grateful.
If there’s one good thing that came out of my Vanderpump Rules obsession, it’s that it brought me to Carey O’Donnell’s writing (and to SUP, the hilarious reality TV recap podcast he co-hosts).
O’Donnell’s writing is clear-eyed, honest, heartbreakingly relatable, and at times laugh-out-loud funny. He’s excellent at setting a scene, and relays the absurdity of everyday experiences in a post-COVID world with painstaking clarity. He’s self-aware and reflective, but not in a navel-gazey way, and his ability to capture the ethos of a pop culture moment (from Scandoval to George Santos) is unparalleled. I devour every newsletter that arrives in my inbox and will continue to do so as long as he’s writing them.
Vera Blossom’s superb newsletter, How to Fuck Like A Girl, in which she shares her thoughts on sex, gender, relationships, and the whole messy business of being human in the 2020s, is compulsively readable.
There’s an undercurrent in Vera’s writing, a through-line of hunger that feels as feral as it does familiar. Whether she’s talking about tarot cards (“I recently broke the seal on my divination ban,” she writes, like a mystic on a cleanse), estate sales (“there’s bread under there, gay guy ghost bread,” she captions a photo of a dish she’d made using a bread machine bought at said estate sale), or breakups (“At this point, I think both of us had sort of seen the corpse of our relationship laying on the table and begun mourning in our own private ways”), I am endlessly charmed and captivated.
Shelf Offering, Apoorva Sripathi’s weekly newsletter on food, consumption, capitalism, and their intersections, is exactly the kind of food writing I love to read. The way she deftly weaves in stories from her life with thoughtful cultural critique always leaves me with much to—and I’m sorry for the pun—chew on. I’m glad she’s ended her hiatus and am eager to read more.
I’ve always been in awe of Marla Miniano-Umali’s poetry and the way she wields her words. Every choice deliberate, every comma perfectly placed. Sunday Morning is her poetry-focused newsletter, and though its arrival in my inbox has been a little more sporadic as of late, each stunningly evocative poem always feels like a gift. Even if we weren’t friends, I know I’d be a fan. Selfishly, I’m hoping that by including her on this list, she’ll be encouraged to post more because this world needs more of her work.
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If you have any newsletters you think I’d like, send them my way. Next week’s newsletter will be a culture catch-up. As always, thanks for reading. 🖤
Ahhh been needing some Substack recs and here you are with a bunch!!
thank you for the generous shout out! and the feeling is mutual -- glad you're back as well and can't wait to read more from you!!