Oct 22, 2026 · 51 min · 12 segments
We kick off Summer Season with a brief reintroduction to what the News & Reviews community is all about, and what this “newsletter” is going to deliver next year. Books mentioned in this episode…
So my name is Brie.
If you are new here, I am currently live streaming to you and recording from a tiny, tiny town called Intradacqua in Italy.
This is not where I normally live.
I am on a four week residency, which thank you to Cindy.
um and also um to the generous philanthropists who supported me to be here um i'm working on my next book that is my number one what i consider to be my number one like actual job description is that i am an author of both fiction and non-fiction You may be familiar with my work, Eggshell Skull.
That's the sort of, I guess, most famous one.
It's coming up on 10 years now.
I write fiction, nonfiction and whatever the fuck I want.
I've done a little bit of journalism, have a newsletter, lots of different things.
And what news and reviews is, and this is my first question that I'd love to throw to you people watching.
A newsletter that I absolutely adore, and I'm going to tangent sidetrack here for just a moment because it's important.
Um, so if you're watching, please type in the chat, how would you describe news and reviews? Because a newsletter, I adore Blackbird Spy Playing, um, who ostensibly are a newsletter about, um, like clothing and like the sort of artisan as well as the style part of clothing and who are incredibly deliciously transparent and committed to never taking any sponsorship money.
But their newsletter actually ends up being a lot of cultural analysis and thinking about how and why people buy things, thinking about taste, thinking about – and they're just sort of geniuses.
Anyway, they say that it's really, really embarrassing and stupid and dumb and sort of like really kind of cucked, I guess, to refer to your newsletter as a substack.
because we have this extraordinarily, um, dynamic community component.
And then also for over a year now, we've been doing these seasons of live streams.
We've just launched Garnerama, which is a touring live show of literary criticism.
Um, and the word newsletter doesn't capture what all of those things are.
We have book clubs sometimes, um, We have these really high-calibre author interviews, but then also we have the criticism and the news-ish stuff.
And then often we bring in members of the community to just share and talk.
So I have always struggled to describe what this place is.
But I do remember one of the five-star nerds a long time ago saying, and I feel this to be true as well, often the best things are not easily describable.
So my name is Brie.
If you are new here, I am currently live streaming to you and recording from a tiny, tiny town called Intradacqua in Italy.
This is not where I normally live.
I am on a four week residency, which thank you to Cindy.
um and also um to the generous philanthropists who supported me to be here um i'm working on my next book that is my number one what i consider to be my number one like actual job description is that i am an author of both fiction and non-fiction You may be familiar with my work, Eggshell Skull.
That's the sort of, I guess, most famous one.
It's coming up on 10 years now.
I write fiction, nonfiction and whatever the fuck I want.
I've done a little bit of journalism, have a newsletter, lots of different things.
And what news and reviews is, and this is my first question that I'd love to throw to you people watching.
A newsletter that I absolutely adore, and I'm going to tangent sidetrack here for just a moment because it's important.
Um, so if you're watching, please type in the chat, how would you describe news and reviews? Because a newsletter, I adore Blackbird Spy Playing, um, who ostensibly are a newsletter about, um, like clothing and like the sort of artisan as well as the style part of clothing and who are incredibly deliciously transparent and committed to never taking any sponsorship money.
But their newsletter actually ends up being a lot of cultural analysis and thinking about how and why people buy things, thinking about taste, thinking about – and they're just sort of geniuses.
Anyway, they say that it's really, really embarrassing and stupid and dumb and sort of like really kind of cucked, I guess, to refer to your newsletter as a substack.
because we have this extraordinarily, um, dynamic community component.
And then also for over a year now, we've been doing these seasons of live streams.
We've just launched Garnerama, which is a touring live show of literary criticism.
Um, and the word newsletter doesn't capture what all of those things are.
We have book clubs sometimes, um, We have these really high-calibre author interviews, but then also we have the criticism and the news-ish stuff.
And then often we bring in members of the community to just share and talk.
So I have always struggled to describe what this place is.
But I do remember one of the five-star nerds a long time ago saying, and I feel this to be true as well, often the best things are not easily describable.
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