This photo, taken in Manchester a couple of months ago, has nothing to do with the topic of this newsletter. I just like all the teeth.
For the last few months I've been doing freelance editing a couple of days a week for the Manchester Mill publications--local sites for Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow, and London. I'm having trouble knowing how to describe them: Websites? Newsletters? Publications? Substacks? (Out of date, since most have now migrated to Ghost, but no one says, "I read a great Ghost this morning"!) All those terms are broadly accurate. but none feels quite right. I was a subscriber to the Manchester Mill before I worked with them, and I don't know that I ever went to the website--to me they were newsletters I read in my email inbox. But when I wanted to provide links in the first sentence, I went to the web, since that is where their stories are archived.
The Mill is not the subject of this newsletter--though I have been SO IMPRESSED with every aspect: smart management, great writers, dogged reporting, a real commitment to local journalism; if you have a few extra bucks a month and an interest in any of these cities or Britain generally, I HIGHLY recommend you subscribe to at least one. Nor is it the tricky business of new media nomenclature. (Phew!) The topic is, I guess, the challenge of newsletters. Like this one I haven't sent out in nearly five months, despite writing "newsletter" on my to-do list every other weekend.
The thing I've found tricky is that I said it would be a collection of interesting things I found while researching my book A PLACE OF OUR OWN: SIX SPACES THAT SHAPED QUEER WOMEN'S CULTURE, but that book is out now (and available in bookstores just about everywhere), so I am no longer diving for those particular pearls. (Pause to ponder Pearl Diver, the 1970s lesbian-feminist magazine from Portland, Oregon, which didn't hesitate to put drawings of naked women on its cover. Also that as a confirmed water-hater, pearl-diving really is the job I am least suited for.) I have been working on another book for 18 months or so--and WOW have I found some amazing things while digging around the internet and reading old magazines--but I can't talk about that project until--inshallah!--it sells.
As lots of people say on the web, "you don't have to share everything," so it's obviously fine NOT to send out a free newsletter. But subscribers sometimes write and ask where I've disappeared to. (The answer: Nowhere, I'm still at my desk most days of the week.) And, needless to say, I am very happy to talk about myself, and to tell you how great A PLACE OF OUR OWN is at every possible opportunity.
SO, to bring this throat-clearing to an end, just as it's beside the point to wonder what to call the Mill publications, it's daft for me to obsess about breaking the terms of my newsletter promise. (Never mind that I'm probably the only person who knows that it was supposed to feature chewy nuggets of book research.) I hope to have news about Book 2 in the next couple of months, but until then I'll send a newsletter out every other weekend containing SOMETHING I find interesting, whatever that might be.
UPCOMING EVENTS: I'm very excited for an event at Edinburgh's Lighthouse Bookshop on Wednesday, June 4, when I'll be appearing with Jane Cholmeley, one of the owners of London's Silver Moon Bookshop (1984-2001) and author of A Bookshop of One's Own. I'm also going to be visiting the Pacific Northwest in October. I'll definitely be in Eugene, Oregon, and I very much hope to add stops in Portland and Seattle, but more on that once we figure it all out!
RECOMMENDATIONS: I was blown away by Libertad, by Bessie Flores Zaldívar. I didn't know anything about it when I borrowed it from Libby, but it fit with my pledge to read more books set in places other than the US or UK. It's officially YA--I guess because Libertad, the main character, turns 18 over the course of the book. Libertad is queer, but that's just one of the things she's figuring out. It's an incredibly successful political novel--the political background is Honduras' undemocratic 2017 election--and at a time when migration is in the crosshairs (when is it not!), it's fantastic on people's motivations for leaving countries they love. SOOO good! (I just made a YouTube video about my January reading.)
LISTEN TO ME: No more Working, but I was on the Culture Gabfest; gave some advice on Dear Prudie alongside the great Kristen Meinzer; talked with Marwan Kaabour, author of The Queer Arab Glossary for Outward; and wrote about the cluelessness of Ellen DeGeneres' Netflix special in Slate. I also spoke with former Slate Fraymaster and all-round great pal Moira Redmond for her blog Clothes in Books.
I'm working on an episode of Decoder Ring and a cool feature for the Glasgow Bell--more on those when they appear.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to share it, or were forwarded this edition and want to subscribe, the link is https://buttondown.email/WhereAre. The archives are here. Info on ordering A PLACE OF OUR OWN can be found here.Reply to this email to share any thoughts or ideas.