Happy 2024, everyone! Another year behind us; another year I continued to be lucky enough to read and write and edit for a living. Living the dream, baby!
If you don’t read my monthly Thunder Thighs newsletter, I’ll give you a little rundown here of all the literary goodness that’s gone down this past year.
First off, there are my regular gigs. It was a rough year financially, and I lost half of my regular income suddenly and unexpectedly. But that’s the freelance life, I suppose. Still, I continue to be a senior contributor over at Book Riot, and I also continue to do copywriting work for Cute Little Fuckers, a queer-owned sex toy company with a lot of heart (it may not be a literary gig, but I get to write words for a company whose values align with my own, so I’m mentioning it). And while most new content is paused at Feminist Book Club, I’m excited for where things are going there. Right now, I’m on their transition team as we evolve into a worker-owned coop.
I’m also still the Essays Editor at Hippocampus Magazine, which I so enjoy. This year, we started holding regular virtual events while the big in-person conference is on hiatus, and I’ve already participated in an evening of mini sessions, during which I gave a flash presentation on how to survive that angsty first year after your book pubs. In the new year, I’ll be moderating a reading and discussion with Chantha Nguon and Kim Green, the authors of Slow Noodles. This is especially exciting for me as, back in 2021, I worked with them to edit an excerpt of their book for publication in the mag. The piece was later included in a Longreads roundup of the best of the web, after which they landed their book deal, which makes me feel like a proud mama. You can read “The Gradual Extinction of Softness” here.
What else? I had new pieces published in oranges journal and Romper. I found out that an essay that was published in under the gum tree last year was listed as a Notable Essay by Best American. I had a horror story accepted by Coffin Bell, which is slated to run on New Year’s Day, plus I have a piece on book sanctuaries coming out in Poets & Writers. And in addition to the abovementioned Slow Noodles event, Emily Nagoski asked me to join her in Philly to chat with her in front of other human beings as part of her book tour for Come Together.
Finally, thanks to a big push from my writing group, I’ve started working on an essay collection. It’s nice to have another big goal to focus on.
My god, I feel as if I’m writing one of those Christmas newsletters. Let’s move on to the books.
Once again, I aimed to read 175 books and, this time, I just made it! Out of those 175 books, I loved 21 of them. Regular readers may notice that this number is lower than usual. I’m not gonna lie. All of 2023 felt like one big book slump. But that’s why y’all are gonna read through this list and give me some books recs. Right? Right?? Onward.
